Popular cinema has often made such splendid use of sport to make large points about achievement and inclusion that, strangely, it can be too easy to underestimate how difficult the odds can be. And also forget in the blur of match reports the galvanising inspiration of icons. A report in this newspaper on Friday tracked the preparations of 45 girls in the Valley for eventual selection to represent Jammu and Kashmir in the under-19 national football matches. Some in hijabs, others making up for a lack of experience with memories of David Beckham and Ronaldo, they turn out for long trials in the Kashmiri summer. Will they get far in their football careers? That’s an assessment for later. What’s more meaningful is the aspiration they act upon, and thereby the way in which they are asserting their entitlement to every spectre of an opportunity.Sport as an empowering tool found its most flamboyant mascot recently in Mahendra Singh Dhoni. In his fairytale success is to be seen a man shaped by his background but in no way circumscribed by it. Countless other instances abound: Dhoni’s many new teammates, bringing stories from the heartland of Uttar Pradesh and the suburbs of Mumbai. Women’s hockey’s cheerful soldier, Mamta Kharab — on whom was modelled the perky forward in Chak De India — carries a narrative of the ways in which sport connects people to the mainstream of initiative and excellence.And to those who view this, to the spectator, the story moves two ways. On the one hand, with its emphasis on team identities, it brings out parochial/nationalist emotions. Yet, in the manner in which ever newer identities are brought into the teams, it can make those notions of region and nation and gender more inclusive. So, we say to young Hina Rukhsar, a budding striker in the Valley’s green fields, go on, bend it like Beckham.
