As a fidgety fourteen-year-old, Nasser Hussain dreaded Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. And, it wasn’t maths classes at school that he was loath to attend thrice a week. Father Aga Hussain half-persuaded, half-insisted that the son accompany him to the Bombay Gymkhana fields for a scrum or two at the rugby team’s practice sessions. And a reluctant Nasser hated the first fortnight he was dragged there.Eleven years down the line, Hussain Jr leads India onto the same Gymkhana grounds for its two key Orange World Cup qualifiers at home and admits he is glad he was forced into playing the game. It is more than rugby’s robust genes that Nasser, 25, inherits from Aga Hussain, India’s first international captain.‘‘The sport is such that there is also a sense of carrying forward the tradition,’’ Nasser says. ‘‘It was a special feeling since it was India’s first Test match ever,’’ Nasser recalls, made doubly exciting because the duo played together. But he didn’t last too long on the field,’’ Nasser had noted with a smirk.While Aga Hussain, now the manager of the team states unabashedly that his son is playing better quality rugby than he even ventured into in his prime times, the father needed some convincing when he watched the teenager being singled out by the lofty Singaporean opponents.‘‘They targeted him because he was our youngest player and brought him down from a high ball for a very nasty tackle. I told myself then that if he got up and resumed playing he would never look back. He got going, and I knew he would go all the way,’’ he says.It is hardly coincidental that Nasser plays loose forward, a position his father vacated before hanging up his boots. Mirroring his father’s physique, Nasser was best suited to play the scrum-half’s closest aide. But it was also the attitude that trickled down to the son nicely fitted in as the last man in the scrum. Rugby was not as physical or pacy when Aga Hussain regularly guided his Bombay Gymkhana boys to the national title. And Nasser, several paces quicker after a stint at the Newcastle University and games in the Third Division in England says that one dissimilar trait is that he is ‘‘way faster’’ than his father.
