A sisters act

Sharmada second-seeded failure

Harbhajan Singh of tennis & his wiles

First day formers’ show

A game of change

Sporting families!!

For a good cause

For a national player, selected amongst all junior basketball playing boys in the country at the national training camp in preparation of the upcoming Asian championship, Lokesh Sharma is quite an anomaly. With only six months of basketball training behind him, he has already broken into Chhattisgarh's U-16 team, and now has a shot at wearing the India colours.

While his towering height of 7ft is of great help, but it is with perseverance in face of odds that the sixteen-year-old has managed to find a place in the squad of top 30 players billed to represent the country at Vietnam.

His time away from the game shows. Lokesh, called Lucky by his friends, struggles through most of the drills, while his fellow teammates look to enhance their performance by cutting seconds from the stopclock that measures time taken to complete drills.

As a twelve-year-old he started playing basketball at a local ground in Kolkata, he was spotted by Pawan Tiwari, a former Chhattisgarh player. Pawan asked him to give a trial at Raghvendra Singh Gaur’s academy in Bhilai. But his father, Shambu Prasad Sharma, who works for the local garment store, reluctantly agreed to send him to Bhilai. "For tall players its difficult to do push ups and bend low. He managed to do both with some difficulty," recalled RS Gaur, who also Lokesh to shift to Bhilai pemanently and also offered to sponsor his lodging.

Just when it seemed like Lokesh's career was going to take off it came the unexpected halt. He was ordered back home by his father, who wanted Lokesh to help him to help out with the livelihood. Disappointed at the turn of events he frittered time watching TV and roaming with friends. For almost two years he did not step on to the court and broke all his contacts with the game. But he deeply missed the energy and the adrenalin rush of the game.

He again broached the topic of playing the game to his parents. The polite requests turned into a teenage rebellion when he refused to speak with or accompany his father anywhere. "It was my cousin's wedding, a big family occasion. I refused to be a part of it. When my dad questioned me I replied ‘if you won't let me go where I want I won't go where you want’, " he said.

That settled the argument , with some backing from Pawan he once again went for trials at Bhilai. In April this year he started training at the academy. After a month of preparation he travelled with the Chhattisgarh team for the Basketball Youth Nationals. It was here he achieved his biggest victory. Watching him play live on TV and win a bronze medal, his father finally conceded that his son had made the right decision and promised to give him full support.

On the face of it 17-year-old Kunal Anand is an introvert, with chocolate-boy looks. But once he is on the tennis court a completely different side of him emerges. Standing sideways to the baseline he tosses the ball and jumps high to hit it with uncharacteristic venom much to the surprise of his opponents. His serve is perhaps what caught Japan’s Koki Matsunaga by surprise.

The Delhi boy earned his first Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) point at the ITF Men’s Futures tournament at the RK Khanna Tennis Stadium with his 6-4, 6-0 win over Matsunaga before losing to sixth seed Patrik Rosenholm in straight sets in the second round on Wednesday.

This ATP point may well prove to be a catalyst in the young lad’s career, as it gives him a place on the international tennis map.“I will have a world ranking now. It makes me about the 1,500th ranked player in the world. I feel good and proud about that,” said Kunal.

This success hasn’t come without its share of struggle. He has spend the last one year travelling the length and breadth of the country playing ITF tournaments. He also tried his luck in Pakistan where he won the doubles event, however, success in singles has eluded him.

New avenues

Academics too had to be put on the back burner. His father took the conscious decision of enrolling Kunal in an open school so he could focus on building his game. This win opens many doors that hitherto were closed.

“Now I am guaranteed entry at every futures tournament. I might also be seeded and can avoid tough matches in early rounds,” Kunal said. Sponsorships too could come along the way.

For now he is in a mood to celebrate. The victory was followed by huge celebrations. “I treated my friends to kababs,” said a happy Kunal. Family and friends called and congratulated him on this breakthrough. He now wants to travel abroad and prove his mettle.

Deepak Anand, his father recalls, “Kunal’s result in juniors were not up to the mark. He had difficulty closing matches. Then in his last U-14 national tournament he won the title. We were having second thoughts about his tennis career but that win changed things. We treated it as a sign of destiny.”

The moment to rejoice will pass soon as Kunal will head to Chennai for the men’s nationals. Tougher challenges lie ahead for the promising youngster but he has already proved a point.

From a boy to manhood

Chess matches may be won or lost on one major error, and it therefore becomes second nature for players to carefully plan and precisely calculate every single move both on and off the chess field. He may have done enough preparation for the AAI Grandmasters Tournament but Parimarjan Negi could not have planned for or anticipated what happened on Tuesday. Though he showed much maturity and resilience, he lost a seven-hour long battle against Italian Grandmaster and tournament leader Caruana Fabiano in 98 moves.

“You may practice a variety of moves but what happens in a match is completely different and one has to deal with it at the spur of the moment,” he says.

This loss is his fourth out of six matches in this tournament after he already went down to Viktor Laznicka, Krishnan Sasikiran and to Caruana for the second time. The defeat at the hands of Sasikiran in the fifth round hurt the most. “The mistake I made against Sasikiran was elementary, even the kids attending a coaching camp here would have been able to spot it. But with time you learn to sulk less about the losses and start focusing on the game ahead,” Parimarjan said about a dubious 29th queen move that cost him a crucial fifth round match.

And at 18 years of age, Parimarjan is not just coping with the decisions he makes with the chess board in front of him, but those off it as well. “Earlier I used to decide the tournaments he played. We also bought books for him. Now he makes all these decisions himself,” said his father JBS Negi. Some of Parimarjan’s new decisions find opposition from close quarters but he is willing to stick to his choices. “My mother wanted me to start college this year. She asked me to join college and go there just for exams while focusing on chess. I was not in favor of the idea as I wanted to experience college as a regular student and not just for a degree. Moreover, it doesn’t matter whether I graduate at 22 or 23 a lot of student drop a year for other preparations. For now I am focusing on chess,” he reasons.

He has chosen to stay at the tournament venue instead of his house in order to focus on the matches. “At house there are too many distractions and in between tournaments I need to be in another zone.” While parents understand the decision it’s more difficult for his younger brother Khagolim who wants to spend the night chit chatting with his brother.

The family has to adapt to the demands of the game unquestioningly. They support his quiet and introvert lifestyle. The only time we have celebrated his victory was when he became a Grandmaster,” his mother Paridhi Negi says.

Not all decisions Parimarjan makes find favour with his parents. “I asked him to get rid of the rugged look he has been sporting as it doesn’t look proper,” his father said but he persists. Still, the Negi family is willing to give him time to grow - both his beard and his personality.

A young talent, a daunting challenge

Gopika Kapoor and South Africa’s Tegan Edwards had just lost the doubles second-round match in straight sets on Court 6, and after her loss in the singles to Prerna Bhambri 6-2, 6-0 a day before, it was curtains for her at the ITF tennis tournament at RK Khanna stadium at a very early stage.

This sequence of disappointing defeats has continued for over 12 tournaments now. To put things in perspective, in the last nine months Gopika hasn’t won a match in nine attempts at seven different cities — the lone exception being a tournament in Johannesburg where she managed to win a qualifying round before losing again.

For an ordinary player, doing the rounds of tennis circuit like this might have been unacceptable. And the pressure and disappointment of losing would have forced anybody to contemplate a quick farewell from the game in search of other avenues. But Gopika isn’t as ordinary as her results make her to be.

From childhood she has been spoiled by the habit of winning. She has consistently been among the top juniors in the country. Ratan Sharma, her coach for 9 years points out: “She did reasonably well in the ITF Juniors circuit was ranked second in the u-12 category, fourth in u-14 and fifth in u-18 category.”

So where did it all go wrong? It started in Bangkok where she was preparing ahead of a busy tournament schedule. After an evening meal she felt unwell and went for medical check up. “When she returned to India, she was feeling weak and her lips were swollen. Doctors diagnosed her with intestine cancer and 25 allergies at the age of sixteen,” Alpana Kapoor, her mother recalled. The family were shell shocked with grief.

For the next one year, tennis was completely stopped. So was her intake of flour, rice and proteins. The check up and rounds of hospitals went on for ten painstaking months. Eventually it was found that the earlier diagnosis was completely faulty. What was thought to be intestine cancer was actually a severe food allergy suffered from mushroom intake. “When we heard this, there was only relief on our faces. The first thing I did was to take her to a restaurant and let her eat what she wanted,” recalled her mother.

To fast-track Gopika’s return to competitive tennis, her parents sent her to train in France. However, her comeback in 2010 was hampered by an ankle injury she suffered during practice. Though she recovered quickly to get back on the circuit, the rhythm and confidence she enjoyed in the junior days was missing. “I still haven’t reached the level that I was at, before all these incidents happened,” says Gopika.

One loss after another has been the last straw. “When she steps on the court her thought is, I can’t afford to lose as oppose to I can win. That makes all the difference. With aggressive strokes and quick footwork, she has the skills to trouble the top players but mentally she is unable to get past the bad run ,” says coach Sharma. Her expression looking at her mother during matches conveys a sense of helplessness and not the determination of a fighter.

It has reached a point where Gopika, after every defeat, comes to her mom asking if its time to move on. Better sense prevails the next morning and her parents convince her to stay the course. Self doubts are creeping not just in her mind but also in the family’s. “Gopika’s grandparents are very upset with the results. They are beginning to questions if all the effort is worth it,” said Alpana Kapoor, her mother.

Fellow players and analysts have written her off. But Gopika and her mother refuse to do so. “I need that one win to turn things around,” says Gopika. As soon as the match ends, her coach joins Gopika for a practice session. For every cloud has a silver lining hers cannot be far away, her mother sitting in the stands repeats to herself.

Anand prove a point after earning a point

Delhi, 09 June, 2011 :DigitalEdition

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Delhi, 14 July, 2011 :DigitalEdition

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