Hi friends, after getting a kind of good response for my previous post, Iam writing this. Thanks for all your valuable comments to my previous post and your constant encouragement only makes me to write more. So please go through the post and give your comments.
I was doing my first year of engineering. It was almost about to complete. That was the time “hostel day” celebrations began. I was really interested in all sporting events. I love sports more than studies. But I never got a chance to play right from my school days, since my school had no ground at all. I usually love to play cricket, football and shuttle. Since there was no cricket and football, I thought of participating in shuttle during the “Hostel day” celebrations.
In the very first game itself I had a match with my roommate Rajesh Vitta. He is one of the best players in badminton. On the first match itself I lost to him. I got “1 point” but he got “15 points” and he won(that 1 point also he simply left it for me as I was his roommate)
I was totally upset on that day. Then I sat on one corner and watched all the matches. That was the first time for me to play shuttle in indoor auditorium. I enjoyed watching other players. Atlast my room mate got 3 rd place only. One guy called s.j from cse dept, got 1st prize. Actually he is a state level player. He had the ability to smash in reverse also. Really he is a great player. That day I decided that we have to play atleast once with this guy and have to get atleast 1 point.
Then days went on, I was in my second year. That time we got room in hostel, which was very nearer to shuttle court. Here I had a friend called “Belbin”(My shuttle guru).I know this guy from my 1st yr itself. But I never knew that he was a good shuttle player till that time. Then one day I got an opportunity to play shuttle with him. Then only I came to know that he is a nice player. From then on, he became a kind of coach to me. Usually Belbin(mokkai mani), Balaji(muttai baraji) , Glady(quarter mama) and myself will go and play from 3 30 to 6. After getting coached by Belbin, I started smashing easily. Then 2 or 3 times I defeated Belbin itself. After, almost a year of coaching, again the hostel day came. We participated this time too. In singles event, I went upto quarter finals this time. But lost to a guy called Abhishek from ece dept. On that game I got so many serves but I wasted almost every serve. Each and every time I served, it went out. I practiced using plastic cock but in the match they gave me feather cock. L L
Then in doubles event, Belbin was my partner.We easily won all the matches and we reached finals. Here in finals, we faced sj(state player) and shakthi(district) duo. They never faced a defeat in this past 2 years. So my classmates were telling us ”machi epudiyum thothiduvinga asingama thokathinga da”(means u will surely lose but at least give a decent fight da). Our match with them was scheduled at 9 PM. We were really eager to play with them.
Match started, only my friend Balaji was there to encourage us. Match was going on with full excitement. Match was equally poised till 8 and we both had equal points. We got tired. Neither of us could get a point for quite some time. Then they started getting more points. Whenever we made a smash, sj easily took it. Then the score became 14-9. We had only 9 points.
They had only one serve left for them and they needed just one point to win the game. Then when he was about to serve, we smiled and he too smiled. Everyone thought we were going to lose(including us). But he smiled and casually served. He smashed it into the net. Then we got 2 fresh serves. But we could make the points from 9 to just 10. Then it was service cut for us. But this time in the 2 serves they couldn’t get a point. We again got a chance to serve, this time we targeted Sakthi and it worked for us too. Belbin started serving and started getting more points. It was deuce (14-14) then. But we didn’t get satisfied with it and made some excellent deliveries and smashes and the scores became 16- 14. We won the match. The match went for some 45 minutes. We were flying and shouting inside the auditorium. We were really excited and couldn’t believe that we won. That was an awesome moment in my life. All the credits go to Belbin only and I dedicate this post to my “Shuttle Guru” Belbin. J J
