Some get made, and some get sent !

May 11, 2009
I came, I saw and I conquered !
A bit immodest, but what the heck !! Am really in an upbeat mood today. The team that I was in and captained, has won a tournament. As I said earlier, I have been playing some football with the guys at the stadium. The coach announced that a tournament would be held among the club’s players with all the 80 players divided into 4 teams. One of the teams called the Dodgers Lions, was handed over to me and I was supposed to captain the side. It could not have started from a worse note, with one of the senior players unhappy with him being in my team, away from his friends. He refused to do anything and just sat there sulking. This started the other players complaining of how weak a team the Lions were and how we should be getting some more better players. I knew I had a huge task on my hands.

Here was I just 4 days old into the stadium scheme of things and the guys didn’t even know who I was and where had I suddenly appeared from. The only people who recognized me on the field were my old coach and a couple of mommies of the kids who were also in the academy the year before. So it was up to me to create a healthy team-spirit and with my bitter experiences at witnessing dictatorial styles of leadership, I decided to be a cheerful and happy go-lucky but an intelligent leader. There was no way I could get away with vetoing the guys’ ideas or giving them lengthy advices. It would just have made the team members treat me like the Kolkata Knight Riders treating John Buchanan !

So there was I listening to each one of them and saying that what they are saying is right. But what I could do, to my relief, was to make them listen to me as well. I told them to play strategically and in an organized. An ordinary team can be successful only when each member realizes her/his role in the scheme of things and is willing to essay it. I gave them the option of choosing whatever positions they wanted to play, because I did not have the respect of the players to even command them to do something that they were not comfortable with . This democratic policy did give me some strategic headaches with certain weaknesses creeping in to the shape of the team, but then I had no choice but to proceed.

Thankfully the team covered up the weaknesses with an inspired display in the first game to win it emphatically 4-0. I was glad that I had marshaled the mid-field play well and with my passing skills, helped in keeping the opposition away from the ball. I thought I had done pretty well. We were having a team meeting after the game and discussing about what happened. That’s when one of the junior boys got up and loudly announced that I was not playing well and that I was proving to be a slow-coach in the middle !!!! I was shocked !!! Me – a slow-coach ???????? You must be kidding. I am supposed to be one of the fastest guys on the circuit. Kid, I can run 100 meters in 10.9 seconds flat !! The selector of Gujarat once had congratulated me on my agility and speed on the field. I can’t be slow !!!!

Suddenly there was silence in our bunch. I realised that probably he was right since it was long time ago that I could stake a claim to be fast and now with lack of practice I was slower than what my alter-ego thought. I could see that some of the seniors in the team were intently watching me. I honestly could not make out if they agreed with the boy or not, but nevertheless I took a huge step in probably saving our team from further blame game, by just smiling at the boy and just offered him a “ok”. This thankfully had the desired effect and there was no further blame game. But inside of me, there was this lurking suspicion about what would happen if we lost a match in the future. Anyway, I offered my team bananas, glucose, cold-drinks and snacks. No wonder, they slowly started calling me a ‘wannabe Shane Warne’. I was considerably older than my team-mates and was not regular on the football circuit of the city. I had come in from Bangalore and was playing with this team for a couple of weeks for the love of the game. They found it amusing and did not lose any opportunity to pull my leg.

The weakness that I had mentioned earlier, cost us in the second game with us conceding a goal in the first half of the game. We went into the break a goal down and the mood in the team was somber. I refrained from making any speeches.Teams are so used to half-time speeches, that if someone does not make it, they think that he is not interested. Slowly a bit of bickering started with the usual suspects calling for changes in the formation and the style. They were suggesting some changes that did not make much sense to me, since I was convinced that we are better off playing the way we were. I didn’t want to make the same mistake that I made in my college days- both at UG level playing for my college team and at PG level tournament – both instances I changed the strategy half-way and had to pay the price for it. This time I just walked off with my banana announcing that there would be no changes, no substitutions and no strategy changes till we pump in two more goals. I just said that and went back to the field to practice with the ball. This probably had a tremendous effect on the players ( which I came to know much later) One of the parents who was a spectator commented, “Look at your captain, he is so cool and composed. He knows there is nothing to worry about. Then why are you boys so jittery. Go out there and play with him.” Only I knew that I was far from composed. I blurted out those words, but now I knew there was going to egg on my face if something positive did not happen in the second half.

We resumed the game after the break and probably due to the adrenaline rush, our team got a corner kick on the right side of the goal post. Normally the better, faster players take the initiative to kick the ball in such situations, but this time I ran across 50 meters to snatch the ball and take the corner kick with my weaker left foot. My team mates protested. They said, “take it with the right. Left will not be powerful enough” Let me tell you that none of my team mates could use their left leg to kick the ball since they were all ‘uni-footed’ players. I just stared at them and continued placing the ball at the corner spot to kick it with the left. Pure football logic said that taking the kick with the left and curling the ball into the post, so that somebody could head it in, was the better plan – and I stuck to it. I curled it in with my left leg and sure enough it created such confusion in the opposition defense that one of the players handled the ball in order to clear it from the danger area and this resulted in us getting a penalty kick, which, yes you guessed it right – I took and pumped in our first goal. !!!!

That was all that was needed for my team. They responded to this with tremendous spirit and skill and by the time we finished the game, we had won the game 3-1. The penalty kick was the last time I had to kick the ball hard, since thereafter the ball never crossed our half line to come to me. The boys saw to it that they gave me enough rest at the back and put the game to bed with an inspired performance. Probably this game gave me the most satisfaction since - I had contributed to the team. Nobody spoke to me or praised me – which was fine with me, since I could sense a new found respect in their eyes for me and this is all that I wanted.

I carried this individual euphoria in to our next game thinking of myself as a brilliant and gem of a player. No wonder, I was the worst player on the park for those 90 minutes. I was so pathetic in the game due to my over-confidence that I even conceded a goal due to my silly mistake even though our team was cruising along. The crowd booed but my team mates kept silent and encouraged me. I can never forget the fact that they stood by me when I was doing badly. Again a sign of how good a team we were when it came to playing like a unit. We won the match and progressively the tournament with an all-win record. We were the apple of the eye of all the spectators since we played a style of football that they were not used to seeing in the local tournaments. And what’s more, some of our players got noticed by some key people who run football in the city. I just hope a couple of the boys make it big and remember the time when this old man played a part in them playing the style of football that is different from what is played at the local clubs.

The prize distribution ceremony was held with the parents in attendance and I returned home with a gold medal, four yeas after I had left competitive football. My mother joked about how I still thought of myself as a kid and didn’t want to stop bringing home medals, hoping that mom and dad would give him ice-cream ( ya, I used to get ice-cream whenever I won anything in school or college).
Anyways it was a wonderful experience for me, on a vacation back home. Never thought I would spend my break from work, slogging it out in the 40+ degree heat of Gujarat. Everyday I was on the field from 2:30 pm to 7:30 pm and my mom is already complaining about me losing my complexion. Mothers, I tell you, can create a fuss about the silliest of things. How does complexion matter for a guy, I never have understood. But she goes about complaining to all the aunties and uncles that “my boy was so much fatter and fairer when he came from Bangalore. Now look at him !! He is half the size and looks as if he has not seen food for ten days ! And look at his skin !!! Its ruined !!!” I quip that I am her son, not her daughter !!! God !she is funny !!