Bam effect: How ‘sparrows’ became renowned ‘eagles’

With just the lone qualification event left,Bam stresses the younger shooters will have to prove their match temperament,and believes simply practicing with the seniors would have helped them.

Bam recalls every step of the rise of India’s golden generation of women rifle shooters – Suma Shirur,Deepali Deshpande,Anuja Jung,Kuheli Ganguly besides Bhagwat. “I called them ‘sparrows’ because of how insignificant they looked when they first started out with those guns in their hands. But how they soared like eagles,making nests in the sky,” he reminds of a time when Bhagwat got crowned Champion of Champions and Shirur struck the pinnacle with a world-record 400/400.

‘Circle of Excellence’

Back then,Ruia College coach Sanjay Chakravarty had struck a rudimentary winning training programme,even as Bam was dabbling at sports psychology while organising shooting meets in Mumbai. “I was experimenting in sports psychology,so I tried everything from primary to PhD-level theories on the girls. They listened without complaining,believing that the heavy mental load as part of the ‘Circle of Excellence Package’ was the norm in shooting. It reached a point where Rahul Dravid,who I was working with as well,came and told me ‘This is a bit too heavy’. Here was a cricketer who pushed pressure thresholds like no one. So that’s when I realised I was really taxing them. I,of course,didn’t tell them that,” Bam adds with a devilish grin.

Just 5 of the 15 persisted with the now-revered psychologist – digesting the stiff regimens,and slowly it was flowing in their blood like the sturdy technique that has lent them the lasting power. Those who quit were never heard of thereafter.

Fighting nauseous jet-lag himself at Atlanta once,Bam had asked Anjali how she’d cope having flown in just a day prior to a World Cup,where the Olympic quota was up for grabs. “She just said she’d not think about jet-lag,and that it was all in the mind. Next day she’d won the quota,” Bam remembers. A shade star-struck,he had been chasing seven-time Olympian and multiple medallist Rajmond Debevec for an autograph. “Rajmond told me ‘Take Anjali’s autograph then. She’ll make your country proud.”

Suma was in the middle of a miserable spell in 2006,when Bam had told her to forget everything save the sole 399 she’d shot in a small meet in Europe that year. “She needed to be retold of her true calibre. She flew out worried and returned having shot the world-record,and then a quota,” the jolly-faced shrink says.

The grit masked by their assassin’s smiles has not wavered,Bam insists,even as young shooters struggle to find that consistency,bereft of the maturity.

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