🕊 Domination
The hidden figure behind the Thomas Cup success, Kerala's football domination & Rayudu's U-turn
May is always such a great month for sport. The IPL enters its business end, the football season reaches its climax, the NBA playoffs begin to heat up and there’s the French Open to top it off.
Sleep cycles and emotional balance always go for a toss this time of the year. Or is that just us?
The unheralded hero of the Thomas Cup success
Vimal Kumar coached Saina Nehwal between 2014 and 2017, a period during which she reached the All-England and World Championships Final and also became World #1. Kumar had been one of the early believers in her talent and during his time as chief national coach, he gave a 16 year-old Saina her first break at the 2006 CWG.
Despite playing such a massive role in her career, he found no mention in the Saina biopic that released last year. We just hope that isn’t the case when the biopic on India’s Thomas Cup success is eventually made.
Vimal Kumar, who accompanied the squad to Bangkok as team manager, is one of the unheralded heroes of the Thomas Cup triumph. The former national champion and Dronacharya awardee has played a gargantuan role in creating and nurturing a production line so rich in talent over the last couple of decades.
Along with Prakash Padukone, Kumar co-founded the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy in 1994 and has served as a Director there for over 25 years now. The PPBA was one of the first private badminton academies in the world at the time and has played a massive role in grooming the likes of Pullela Gopichand, Aparna Popat and Dipankar Bhattacharjee. In the initial years, the academy’s priority was to help the elite players in the country before gradually shifting its focus to the grass-root level.
Lakshya Sen joined the academy as an eight year-old and has been working with Vimal Kumar since. Coach, mentor, father-figure, sparring partner - Kumar has donned numerous hats in Lakshya’s career to help him make the jump from prodigy to professional. Sometimes, this has come at a personal cost. After years of sending down thousands of smashes for Lakshya to strengthen his defense, he damaged his back and shoulder!
His commitment to his mentees has always been beyond par. In the throes of the pandemic, he spoke of how the courts at PPBA would be opened at night for Lakshya to practice. Practice partners were arranged for and the academy also found a place near the PDCSE (Padukone Dravid Center of Sporting Excellence) for Lakshya and his parents to stay at.
Kumar’s success shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that his coaching career began when he was just 22.
“When I was playing in England, I had a contract with Slazenger, the sports gear firm. One of the clauses of the agreement was that I and others who were contracted had to teach in leisure and sports centres in the UK. So I used to go there and teach youngsters the fundamentals of the game,” he said in an interview to The Bridge.
He dubbed the Thomas Cup success the biggest win in Indian badminton history. With coaches like Vimal Kumar at the helm, this is the biggest win in Indian badminton history yet.
Kerala’s growing football domination
On Saturday, Gokulam Kerala beat Calcutta’s Mohammedan SC to become the first team in I-League history to win successive league titles. Gokulam’s trophy haul in the last five years is staggering; they have one Durand Cup, two Kerala Premier Leagues and one Indian Women’s League title to go with their two I-League wins. Not bad for a team that was only founded in 2017.
Kerala football is having a moment and Gokulam is just one part of this success. The state won the Santosh Trophy a couple of weeks ago, defeating West Bengal on penalties. Kerala Blasters, the state’s ISL outfit, lost narrowly to Hyderabad FC in the ISL final earlier this year.
The glory days have returned to one of the country’s proudest footballing states. Between 1988 and 1994, Kerala reached seven consecutive Santosh Trophy finals, winning two of them. In this period, Kerala Police won two Federation Cups and FC Kochin, India’s first professional club, won the Durand Cup. The state’s representation in the national team during the late 80s and 90s has been compared to the hold the Mumbai Cricket used to have on the cricket team. There’d be upto five players from Kerala in India’s starting XI!
The fall from grace was sharp; for almost 10 years there was no team from Kerala in the I-League, numerous local clubs folded and between 2012 and 2016 there were no players from the state in the national team. The locals grew more interested in cricket; some credit Sreesanth for the rise in cricket’s popularity during that time.
The renaissance began with the formation of Kerala Blasters in 2014. The ISL re-captured the imagination of the public and home games in Kochi began to draw crowds upwards of 50,000 and also built up a massive following on social media. The Kerala Football Association also sprung into action; in 2013 they launched the Kerala Premier League and the following year they started 140 grass-root centers in Kerala, 10 in every district. Their efforts have now begun to reap rewards.
It was the sustained manner in which the Blasters drew crowds that convinced corporate conglomerate Gokulam to venture back into the footballing landscape after their previously run team Viva Kerala folded in 2012.
“I said to the chairman, let’s give it three or four years. If we do not succeed, we’ll close down, what’s going to stop us?” the club’s CEO VC Praveen said.
Person of Interest
It’s been a season to forget for CSK. More than the performances on the field, it’s the rumblings off it that will concern the Yellow Army. The latest spate of turbulence came on Saturday when Ambati Rayudu took to Twitter to declare his retirement from the IPL and then deleted his tweet within 30 minutes.
The announcement caught the team management and owners off guard and it’s been reported that they talked him into taking the tweet down.
“He hasn’t retired. He was a bit disappointed for not having done well this season. So in a fit of (frustration), he put that on Twitter. Then I called him and told him that this was not the management’s view (that he is not contributing) and he shouldn’t do that (retire). He agreed to that. He is so attached to the franchise, he felt that he wasn’t doing well and should quit. That’s the only thing,” CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan told The Indian Express.
Coach Steven Fleming too played down the incident, calling it a “storm in a teacup”. And while that may be true, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that winds of change have rocked the CSK boat. From the Jadeja captaincy U-turn to the cloud under which he left the bubble to Rayudu’s ‘retirement’, the season has been a PR disaster for one of the IPL’s most stable franchises.
The only thing left now is for CSK to unfollow Rayudu on Instagram.
Direct Hits
Cricket came easy to Andrew Symonds. It was the rest that gave him trouble. But at his prime, he was a force of nature.
Amongst all the eulogies and tributes that have poured in for Andrew Symonds in the past few days, we think Joy Bhattacharjya’s above tweet perfectly captured the Australian’s spirit.
Question of the Week:
Name the IPL teams Andrew Symonds played for.
Reply to this email with your answer and stand a chance to be featured on our social media. Send us your IG/Twitter handles with your answer so that we can tag you!
The answer to last week’s question: Trinbago Knight Riders
In last week’s edition:
The IPL’s growing global footprint
The athletes who benefit from the Asian Games Postponement
Avinash Sable breaking yet another national record
Read it here!
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