Nostalgia Strikes........................

One of my friends blog on her mornings brought me back some of the lovely reminiscence of my badminton practice sessions and matches that I cherish forever. The only sport that all the girls in my school by default opt to play during the PT classes was badminton. All I remember is having a shortage of the equipments all the time which forced us to take turns playing the game even in a class of 6:) During an hr's class, the number of successful strikes each of us would have had will be much lesser than the number of times we would have had to exchange the racquets. Inside the dark, musty smelling indoor stadiums of Race course, Madurai was laid the foundation to my badminton courses!!

The days when I had to report for the matches are still fresh in my memory - I used to have to travel an hr by the local public transport (PRC service) to reach the destination. My house and the stadium were on either ends of the city. Route No.73A used to be my chariot - the bus would almost give me a mini tour of Madurai, steering through all the notorious suburbs and by the time one reaches the stadium you will be fairly familiar with at least the names of all the popular residential areas in Madurai!!

The best part of the matches have been these bus rides at the peep of the day - the brightening breeze with a delicate scent of nature, raw smell of the damp soil (Mann Vasanai) that rejuvenates every nerve of yours, the refreshing chillness that feels straight on your face, the devotional songs played at the most amplified volumes on the corners of every other road irrespective of any religiously significant days, hunger-passion cries of cows alternately coupled with barking sounds of stray dogs make it all serene and is definitely a positive influence in setting the mood for a game. One who has inhaled all this before a match is sure to walk out with the trophy!!

Just as I relocated from one school to another for my higher grades, my badminton choices also stepped up from shuttlecock to ball. In my brother's words, ball badminton is a game of 5 lazy bums:) and I only downgraded my preference and never upgraded as I claimed!! Till mid school I was practicing shuttle badminton and from high school onwards I conveniently settled down for ball badminton. As one half of the court is being shared by 5 people, the onus and pressure of the game is also equally shared. The only downside I can think of is the audience attention, which also gets distributed among the 5 players unless you have your own fan following squad dedicated to yourself in the cheering crowd:)

The most unforgettable experience of my ball badminton match series is the Zonals that we played in Kottambatti in '95. Though it’s almost 15 years since I played this match, it resides in my gray matter like it just happened yesterday. Being a student from one of the most reputable schools in Madurai (TVS Lakshmi), I always took pride in showing off my school badge just as a means to give off the academy's name especially in events where the participation was dominated from small schools in and around Madurai. Greater the reputation, higher is the expectation. We were no exceptions to this and satisfyingly we met the expectations with so much ease in all the qualifying matches. By the time we were ready for the finals there was absolutely no sign of tiredness in any of our faces. Many even thought we had taken byes and were playing direct finals. Thanks to all our competent opponents.

Going by the trend of the day we were pretty confident, rather I should say over-confident about the finals. The team that lined up on the other half of the court was adding to our belief - the tallest of the 5 girls was barely an inch over the bottom of the net which was roughly 4 ft above the ground! It was their home ground but still we could already sense the easy victory and were beaming from ear to ear when we took our respective positions waiting for the referee to blow the whistle. Having lost the toss we were on the receiving end of the serves but were very certain that we didn't even have to  change over from the right court to the left before all their 5 hands were down! We even doubted if the ball would cross the net in the first place!!

We had a very huge flock to cheer the teams - it appeared like the whole of Kotambatti was gathered in the grounds to witness the match! Much to our surprise the applauding force were cheering our team instead of their own which was actually a part of their super-strategy adopted to distract us which we realized pretty late - infact their approach worked way too well in their favor for more than half of the match. As naive as we were, we walked straight into their manipulation and paid a very high price - we lost the first set!!! Our trainer was extremely disappointed but she tried her level best to boost our spirits up. We played the second set with better hope and stronger determination which paid good results - We won:)

Now was the tie breaker - the opponent team had crafted their next smart plan of action to knock us off and taste the victory! They had identified their strong and weak opponents and had planned to direct all their strikes to the so-called shaky hands! I was shocked to know that they had spotted our 2 back hands as the weakest and the centre player who happened to be our captain as well, as the strongest. I was one of the back hand player:)

In the third set all the balls were clearly delivered only to the 2 of us carefully avoiding the captain. It was then we realised height doesn’t matter in this indigenous game..it was all about focus and target:) I was deeply upset to have been seen as a 'limp' and by the time I made an attempt to recover the opponents were at a convenient 15. The match ends at 29!! I dared not face my trainer who was shooting daggers at me by now and her very looks spoke volumes. Knowing her I was pretty sure I would be thrown out of the team even before we left the grounds if I did nothing to save the match and in one of the breaks she did say as much to me.


When we resumed, I was still not showing any progress and my trainer had given up. Most of the team was literally in tears. The captain tried to cover up as much as possible for the back hands but unfortunately there was only very little she could do. Even the deceptive cheering squad had chosen to stay silent as they must have felt their extra artful efforts are no longer required to sidetrack us. It was my turn to serve and my USP in ball badminton are my ace services. Without even me realizing I served one of my aces and boom we opened our account in the tie breaker!!!I was literally retaliating on the head honcho of the other team for having considered me as their key to the door of success. Inspite of severe warnings from all in my team and the coach I was stubborn on intending my serves only to her.

Our team was back to shape when the numbers started moving up on the score board. Before we knew we were at "28 all" and were playing the match point. To our advantage we were serving and I was called to use my ace!! This time the ace was not truly an ace and their back hand did pick up for a strike but fortunately it was a net roll. The referee declared us the winners and the amazing audience maintained pin drop silence as if someone had broken a very sad news.

We couldn't believe that we had done it. The other team didn’t even show up to shake hands with us as they had not anticipated this moment of losing the championship to us! This was one of the toughest tie breakers I have played ever and took us all the energy that we had saved from the 6 earlier matches to embrace the triumph!!

What seemed as a piece of cake was finally a touch and go!! I still value my contribution to the victory of the match and feel ecstatic:)