Monday, July 30, 2007

Squash Girls From New Delhi


India badly needs excellence in any field you can name. In spite of tremendous institutional growth achieved by individual inspired organizations, excellence at large is deceiving us at every front. Today when people’s President who still claims that India will become developed by 2020, I feel the need to talk about excellence becomes more important.

Sania Mirza is a big hope in this country of more than 50 crores females. Today Sania has reached to the final of the $600,000 WTA Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, where she will play with the top-seeded Russian Anna Chakvetadze, ranked No 7 in the world.

Amidst Sania and Saina, recently, National Squash championship concluded at Chenai. And two Chenai girls fought in final to clinch the medal. Joshna Chinappa defeated Surbhi Misra 9-5,9-1,9-4 in just 22 minutes and Depika Pallikal defeated Anwesa Reddy 91,9-3, 10-8 in 20 minutes and were in the final and Chinappa won the title for fifth consecutive times and over seventh time. It is a great achievement. Depika is following the path to achieve the title. She is just 16. She lost fighting but I expect that she may cross hurdle next time to win the title.

Today, when DSOI squash champion Sohail returned after the tournament, reminded us of condition of National Championships. On the boys’ side, Saurav Ghosal remains at top. He defeated Siddharth Suchde of Maharastra in the final. I remember him playing in last year final at Gymkhana club squash court. He is good and needs more support and encouragement to beat the battle.

Squash is not very familiar game in India. This has some recognition in defence frorces and we need to be thankful to British for this. For civilian even the resources are not available in general. Now a days, this game is gaining popularity and many courts are being constructed. People are finding fun and opportunity to reach to foreign univerisiites through such game. But achieving excellence is tough because we do not have good court, good coach, competitive players and world class kits. One has to put up too much effort to make good all these.

In such scarce situation, when Rahul arranged a summer squash camp at Kendriya Vdyalaya R K Puram in New Delhi, all the five squash playing girls like Sachika (Delhi champion), Shelly, V Shruti, and Janet were there. For fifteen days, it was good fresh up camp and training for good squash under the guidance of Col Manprit who himself was a national champion for many years. The boys and girls struggled hard to learn and horn their skills for the game.

The training resulted in Delhi boys’ team coming third at national level. As per Sohail, it is a good achievement. Girls’ numbers were not enough to form the team. The coach working at DSOI, Dhaula Kuan confirms his helplessness in generating interest in people to play games or encourage their children for games.

Even if Delhi Chief Minister relative plays squash, this game has very few takers. Media hardly talks about these issues which remains busy in the runs made by Sachin Tendulkar. Individuals have to put up tremendous efforts to achieve a simple growth. Excellence is too far even to be talked about. A highly developed city of India New Delhi has no girl’s team in squash. There is no plan. There is no encouragement. There is no awareness. We still have a long way to go as far as achieving excellence is concerned.


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