Basketballs Bhilai Steals

With engineers and executives crowding the steel plant campus,it wasnt unnatural for them to set up a few hoops in the backyard for employee-recreation,even way back in the 60s. Basketball is the sort of sport everyone dabbles in at college. But it was only with the coming of Patel in the 1980s that the game got chugging along in Bhilai in the last two decades. The sport left him with snatches of his fondest memories of playing for Madhya Pradesh; yet standing at a low-rise 56,he knew better than anyone else the importance of being tallest on court.

Thus began his mission to scout for tall children in Bhilais neighbouring villages,now extended to the rest of the country,as he promises to turn lives around with a ball in hand and hoops to shoot at,if you were born with that vertical advantage. Tall is a pre-requisite now but Patel has rarely turned away shorties who love the challenge of punching above their weight,play the sneaky ball handler and who,importantly,dig hard-work.

I dont see that in English medium students,so I prefer the Hindi mediums where children are not as fussy about their studies and stubborn about their academic careers, he says. Years of experience may have made him discerningly picky about the wards he takes on,but he rubs his hands excitedly at the prospect of turning certified no-hopers into some of the best ball players.

A decade-and-half ago,Seema Singh,now 24,came to Patel,mumbling in between tears that had smudged a doctors certificate that told her she was knock-kneed. Basketball seemed a sport of some distant planet to her on that dreary day. The Class 6 girl with bowlegs and smashed confidence was terribly skinny and her tall gaunt frame offered nothing more than a miserable adolescence and an even dimmer future. Patel set about improving her diet,strengthening her limbs as she diligently exercised and circled the adjoining football ground 10 times.

In 2001 and at 59,towering over many other Indian girls,Seema was one of the three Chhattisgarh girls,besides her teammate Anju Lakra,a tribal,to make the Indian squad. They received a Luna Super each for the effort. Today,Seema walks tall and proud at the Durg railway station,catching errant passengers as Head TC,with a hike of six out-of-turn,performance-based promotions. I remember how much I cried that day when I was told Ill never be able to play basketball. And how Patel sir took up the challenge, she says.

Patel’s academy at Bhilaiunder the Chhattisgarh state association bannerfinds many such Seemas at its doorsteps and Chhattisgarhs impoverished families have begun to see basketball as a way to beat poverty. Forty-five talented players found employment with the Railwaysone of basketballs biggest institutions in India,also reigning National Champions. Chhattisgarh,though,rapidly adopted basketball as its state sport after tasting phenomenal early success bouncing off the board.

To them,it is particularly pleasing to beat Madhya Pradesh (the state out which they were carved in November 2000) as basketball gives their squads reason enough to assert their identity,re-iterate their statehood,plus giving the teens the general right to gloat. For a rank-new region,whose revered state-heroes are the late Raju Pande and Kaushal Yadav,Kargil martyrs of 10 years ago after whom the sports awards are named,basketball will be synonymous with the states earliest history when it gets written. With the womens team winning yet another national title at Pondicherry last year,the squad got a congratulatory call from the Chief Minister,a pointer to basketballs pre-eminence in the new state.

While Chhattisgarh has carved itself a quick reputation of being a champion unit in womens basketball,having already won the Federation Cup and the National Games,and their juniors consistently figuring in the finals of all age-group nationals,it is the mens team that runs into speed-impedes every year. Men taper off in performance against the tall squads of Punjab,Kerala,the Services and Railways. So Bhilais scouts have set out to hunt for tall boys and girls wholl be brought here and trained at basketballs one-of-a-kind hub to fit the specified mold of an international hoopster (read: Tall and Still Taller).

Bhilai is ambitiously looking westward to the USs NBA and its accompanying razzmatazz,as far as basketball goes. Not that the steel-to-steal transformation of a citys image is unprecedented. In the US,Fred Zollner successfully cornered his nations attentionaway from his unglamorous primary occupation of manufacturing steam-propellers for truck and locomotive enginesto setting up the NBAs star unit Detroit Pistons in 1941. In India,basketball has also thrived in Indias premier steel-city of Jamshedpur. Bhilai,though,is grappling with far more basic issues like beefing up the rank malnourished children who come to play basketball,and dealing with genetic constraints: the state simply isnt teeming with tall men. It has enough hunger though to tug at the aspirations of a backward populace,which sees the potential to hit national headlines through basketball.

It is a hot day but Patels charges are diligently taking their allotted turns at shooting. We cant change the routine just because the season changes, says Shrishti Oraon,a well-built forward who is soon to take her first flight abroad to Singapore,picked for the Asian Youth 3-on-3 championship. Spotted at Bilaspur,Oraon looms over the low post,pouching rebounds,and is mighty excited at how the move to Bhilai changed her life in two years. Studying is a restricted worldyour teachers,your schoolmates. With a sport,you travel so much,meet new people, says the 14-year-old.

Patels training centre has separate hostels for the girls and the boys. The girls hostel is two big rooms above Patels residence,spread over a floor. Spacious for its 14 lodgers,with the dining hall downstairs,the girls use a cell-phone to set the alarm for 5 a.m. In the evenings,they sit together to watch their favourite soap,Miley Jab Hum Tum,on TV. We wake up,practise after a heavy breakfast,come back,go to school,come back,practise,watch Miley Jab,have dinner and are so tired that we sleep, says Shrishti. Sundays are free and they can visit their homes,provided they are within travelling distance.

The girls sport identical short-crops,because the 5 a.m. practice-time doesnt allow the luxury to tend to long tresses. After 18,they are free to let their hair grow. They go shopping for family packs of kaajalno one enters the court without their slash of kohland dutifully take back to parents all cash prizes that the government and other patrons offer them after they come back with a title. Their stay,diet and education are all paid for and they begin earning quite early,as every success earns them scholarships.

The funding for the hostels comes from Rajeev Jain,a former IIM-A graduate who deals with fittings,cast,weldings,crossings bogeys and couplings for heavy-tonnage vehicles,exporting them to Germany and General Motors. He says he has no personal motive for supporting the academy but was infected by Patels enthusiasm and so in 2001,he gave them a lakh. The funding has now gone up to Rs 12 lakhless than 5 per cent of his profits at the Bhilai Engineering Corporation,where hes a director.

The coach is given full powers. I detest the idea of politics impeding sports, says Jain,adding,I used to go mad collecting funds,then I just started pitching in myself. Its a fraction of what we earn. The idea is simple. Poor children dont have facilities to play. We give them the opportunity. Success is an optional benefit. The aim is not winning championships. This is to say that if they come 8th or 10th,we wont stop the scholarships. We are a feeder centre to the national team, he says,as he sets about consoling Patel for the dozenth time,as the coach mulls over losing two more players to Railways while Chhattisgarh struggles to win the senior nationals. Patel gets hassled. But I tell him,forget it. Our job is to bring them to a certain level. Were a nursery and have no ambitions of anything more, he says,while adding that he supports the idea of hunting for tall players around the country and channelising their resources at Bhilai.

Like Shalini V.,whose father carries on with his tailoring despite a cataract and loss of hearing,while the girl hopes for a job with the Railways,there are many others. Kids of ferrymen,gola-cart pushers,CISF havaldars and truck drivers,most children come from nearby areas of Ambikapur,Phattal,Seoni and Bilaspur. There is a Class 3 student,Pragati Tiwari,at 53 and who shoots with a prodigious left hand,a truckers 511 daughter Rizwana Hussain from Seoni,besides their 7 tallster in boysP Janaki Ramnath Kumar or Ramu,who was plucked out of obscurity in Guntur in neighbouring Andhra.

I never realised what an asset my height was till I came to Bhilai. People used to call me Lambu. Now Ill work hard and aim for international glory, says 15-year-old Ramu,from 213 centimetres above ground level.

The only three boys,lodged at a tucked-away boys hostel corner borrowed from Bhilais handball academy,have good reason to feel short-changed at their run-down room with its electric bulb hanging casually from the dim,low roof,despite putting in eight equal hours in practice like the girls. Except,Ramu and his roomie,the lanky 69 Dinesh Kumar from Jagdalpur,are grateful that their hard days melted within days of arriving in Bhilai. They gave us food,shoes and kits,a place to stay and assured our parents that we wouldnt stray into anything wrong. Cant ask for more since we started with nothing except our height, says Dinesh,as he ducks the hanging bulb.

Ball handler Shyam Sunder,a tribal boy of 15 with bulging sinews,is a local lad who went from scraping a hand-to-mouth existence five years ago to taking on the best offensive giants in India with his basketball hustle. Basketball changed my life. If I keep playing well in the juniors and youth-level,I can earn as much as Rs 25,000 through performance-based scholarship at Bhilai, he says. Sameer Roy,meanwhile,thanks his father both for his tall genes and his dads job with SAIL in Durgapur. Thanks to him,I grew up playing basketball at the steel plant,and Patel Sir spotted me, says Roy,who has convinced his family to shift to Bhilai.

Its sad that not many tall boys take up basketball in India. By the time we play the seniors,were hoping itll have become a craze in Chhattisgarh, Roy says,having also contributed to the average height of the mens squad.

Bhilais ultimate success story,though,is Aruna Kundu,a tribal girl from Phattal village,who at 510 hunched and hid behind her unruly hair and was painfully reticent before she played basketball five years ago. Spotted at the state championships at Jashpur,300 km from Bhilai,Aruna came to the hostel,where she fought off low haemoglobin and lower social-interaction skills at one go. She was very weak and very shy. But on the court,she had the best speed and an explosive jump, says Patel,who first straightened out her eating ways,then built on her stamina while she was put on a tonic dose for a poor liver. The first thing the long-legged girl,whos also the musician of the bunch and sings in adivasi Urau dialect,was told to do was chop off her long messy hair. With it,went all the reservations and inhibitions. Another steely future was forged.