Like nails on a blackboard, two pairs of feet squeak on the glassy wooden floor. Fluttering towards the young girl, the shuttle drops without notice. Under-developed muscles notwithstanding, she reaches for it with a racquet her size and lobs it beautifully back towards the man, four times her age and wit. Pullela Gopichand leaps back for a smash. Thwack! But somehow, almost magically, the feathers don’t behave themselves—they hook onto the plastic net. During his playing days, Gopichand would’ve cussed under his breath. Cussed for missing out on an easy opportunity; cussed because he lost a point to a weaker opponent; cussed at his dwindling focus. But today, like every single day over the past many years, he grins affably.
“Alright, superstar,” he says with a glint. “Are you ready to become one?” The shy new inductee gushes pink. She crumbles into her mother’s proud arms in the lounge area. From the damp, algae-coloured walls, a postered deity with an orange turban stares down at a most worthy disciple. Now, just like Swami Vivekananda, Gopi too has his arms clasped around his ribs. “Teach everyone his real nature. Call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes,” the poster reads.
Gopichand with young players in the Academy / Indian Express
Everyday, hundreds of mothers bring their anonymous young pawns to Gopi, hoping to turn them into queens. They’ve seen the bronze medal around Saina’s neck, the silver-tipped ambition in Jwala and the golden future encircling Sindhu. It doesn’t matter that they are forced to make a journey 20 kilometres away from the city of Hyderabad at the oddest of hours, or have to suggestively drive right past the career-oriented folks of Cyberabad. They now have a vision, one that they hope will be hard-bound at the Pullela Gopichand Nimmagadda Foundation Badminton Academy. But with Gopi holding the reins, little is impossible. Both the academy and his pupils stand as towering examples.
Built by one man’s singular and burning desire to succeed at all costs, the academy is not just India’s best state-of-the-art structure for excellence in this emerging racquet sport, it is the place where armies are assembled, worlds are conquered and redemption is salvaged. It is the former All-England champion’s finest achievement.
And this story of Gopi’s life’s work begins where a lesser mortal’s would have ideally ended—at the spiking coda of a glorious career. “I remember the day all this started,” Subbaravamma, Gopi’s mother, says, staring at the eight-court hall beyond her. “It was the day I went to pick him up at the Delhi airport after his win at the All-England in 2001. But for some reason, instead of being madly joyous, he was immersed in his thoughts. I would soon know why.”
History achieved, Prakash Padukone emulated (Padukone won the All-England in 1980) and years of hard work gratified, Gopichand chose not to forget the downfalls of his career at the time of glory—the step-brotherly treatment and the training facilities (or lack of it) given to badminton back home. “He said, ‘Amma, I did not have anything. Now I want to give the next generation everything that I did not have,’” she says. “Little did we know then what struggles lay ahead.”
Today, at Gachibowli, there stands a monolithic beast, large enough to hold two storeys of 15 rooms each for the boarders, the badminton hall and several modern sports shops beneath it. On one side, this academy is flanked by a Wimbledon green football field, and on the other, an Olympic blue swimming pool. But just yesterday, it was nothing but an impenetrably rocky Andhra terrain.
But stubborn stones, like impressionable minds, are always conducive to a good chisel knife. And Gopi gave them both a determined cut. “During my playing career, I travelled around the world in search of better facilities. It was a big struggle,” says Gopi. “The big problem in India was we did not have all facilities under one roof. At that time, it was a managerial struggle. But once my career was over, I realised that not having a one-stop shop was a much larger issue.”
For true excellence, Gopi believes a player needs three essentials—one coach, one centre, one facility. “The Santa Monica club in the US has one building and one track, and it constantly produces half-a-dozen of the world’s top athletes. It’s very important that these centres are professional, well funded, completely committed to a cause and have no external interference. Only that gets you results,” he says.
Why not train abroad then, like several do? “I did. In Germany, Indonesia, Denmark and a few more countries. And in none of these places did they allow me to use their national training centres. In England they did, but the quality was poor—I was the best player out there. The ones who were good didn’t allow me to gain from them. Only if I was beneficial to somebody was I allowed in,” he says. “This made me realise that if I really wanted to beat the world, I had to have the programme in my own backyard.” If not in his time, the generation after.
With this physical drive of beating the rest turning cerebral (and infrastructural), Gopi quickly began forming his support team around him. And in the process, he learnt his first valuable life lesson—the difference between pretenders and real friends. “It was a difficult and disappointing period. The corporates said that they cannot fund a badminton academy as that money was kept for the more lucrative sports of cricket and tennis,” Gopi recollects. “Some offered insulting and measly sums. I needed Rs 8 crore to build an academy. My academy.”
In a sport where the most prestigious event pays $10,000 as winning prize money (the first round loser of Wimbledon earns roughly twice that of the All-England champion), Gopi had no considerable funds. But he was driven enough—enough to mortgage his house. “I got Rs 3 crore for my home from the bank, Rs 2 crore from Nimmagadda Prasad, a family friend and a pharmaceutical giant. And the rest from a few sponsors. But I’m proud to say that I did not turn back to the corporates, or even the government for that matter, again,” he says. Despite the insults, what kept him ticking was his love for coaching. “Especially agile-minded children,” the 38-year-old says.
The ‘children’, at that time, was a pre-teen kid called Saina Nehwal, a tenth grade student by the name of Parupalli Kashyap and a couple of ‘toddlers’—B Sai Praneeth and PV Sindhu. “I used to train them at a local stadium while the construction of the academy was happening side by side. Even if I wanted to give up everything and live a luxurious life as, say, a commentator or an analyst, I couldn’t. Not with such talent at a mouldable age,” Gopi says.
And just like that, an irreversible bond was forged. With Gopi and the kids. And Gopi and the academy.
Such has been the connect that when Saina, his pet project, parted ways with him in 2011, it showed immediately in her game. When she returned, she became the first Indian to win an Olympic medal in badminton, ever. The unwritten rule with Gopi was a simple one: jump onto his bandwagon and you become his inner circle member for life. It’s a rule that works even for the canteen wallah.
Mohamed Maqdoom Ahmed is a hot-tempered man. And with several temperamental kids around, it was easy to lose his cool on a few occasions. “A couple of years ago, they refused to eat the food, saying the nutritionist’s diet wasn’t tasty enough,” says Ahmed. “I argued back, but we were so sick of their insults that I told Gopi bhaiya I wanted to leave. And what he told me changed my life.”
These were those life-changing words—now said to be an oft-quoted proverb within the academy walls. “We are the hands that hold these birds—the children. If we press them too tight, they will suffocate and die. If we hold them too loose, they will fall awkwardly. But however well we hold them, as long as they are in our hands, they will always s#%t on it.” Now, Ahmed has made it a point of offering his other cheek to the pesky lads.
Like Ahmed, P Ravichandra is an integral part of the academy’s society, being their chief warden or anna, their big brother. The man from Gopi’s village of Nagandla in Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh wanted to be an army or a police officer until the national star convinced him that “a war could be fought without wielding a weapon.” “I serve an army now and am willing to give my life for it. But instead of khaki, I wear a tee-shirt that says ‘Gopichand Academy’. I won’t trade it for anything in the world,” Ravi says.
Quoting the man fondly known as Gopi bhaiya isn’t just a support-staff phenomenon; the players too do it all the time. Just ask Tarun Kuna, a budding star at Gachibowli. “The greatest lesson I’ve taken away from all my years with him is what he told me after a really difficult training session,” says Tarun Kona, Ashwini Ponnappa’s mixed doubles partner. “He told me that my life as a sportsman is like a half-filled glass of water. When you’re training, you must see it empty, or you’ll never look to learn anything. But once you’re done in the evening, find the spirit to see the water itself, for that is what you’ve achieved. If you can’t see that, then all the effort put into your life isn’t worthwhile.” He probably knows what he’s preaching, considering Gopi spends 15 hours a day at the academy, starting at 4:30 a.m. and wrapping up by half past seven in the evening.
Motivational speaking, something that has sparked a revolution amongst the players in the academy, didn’t enlighten Gopi overnight. Having entered the depths of depression following a tear to his anterior cruciate ligament in 1994, Gopi found solace in meditation and yoga. Few returned from a knee ligament tear back then, fewer still with a mind as polished as the Hyderabadi. He is said to have immersed himself in books of spiritual pioneers, voraciously flipping through Jiddu Krishnamurti, Osho and, of course, Swami Vivekananda—a person who finds his presence felt, via wall hangings, all over this campus. “That injury was a blessing in disguise. It taught me to think, to read, to love,” says Gopi. “It showed me just how much I love badminton. And just how to persevere.”
Monetarily, the academy is yet to show substantial profitable returns, despite being open to the public in 2008. Yet, Gopichand ploughs on—investing his time and energy and finances to show his wards the way. “I did not win a medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but that worked as a tool to motivate the next generation to bring one for me,” Gopi mutters, staring at his Arjuna, Khel and Dhronacharya awards—the only person to win all three.
“Saina will soon realise that the mileage received from a bronze medal is not much. In people’s minds, the shelf-life of such success is less than six months. But from my personal perspective, it was a goal achieved. I wanted to win it and I won it. But now my aspirations have changed.”
And what would those be? Subbaravamma explains. “If there is a day when a big final—like the All-England—is contested between two of the boys he’s trained, then all of Gopi’s hardwork will be justified,” she says. “That will be the day his coaching life will achieve its truest glory. He can then stop being a coach, put his feet up and watch a good match.” It will also be the day India truly recognises a one-man institution.
Next in Line
PV Sindhu, 17
Ranked 26th in the world and yet to break out of her teens, Sindhu is undoubtedly Indian badminton’s next big thing, physically and figuratively. With Gopi’s eyes fixed on her to be as good as her training partner Saina, the straddling near six-footer has said to have got what it takes to unsettle the Chinese. With the national championship under her belt, Sindhu is all set to storm the international scene.
Sourabh Verma, 20
The boy to make the most heads turn at the India Open Super Series in New Delhi, Verma upset some bigwigs in his run up to the quarterfinals. He beat Olympic bronze medallist Sony Dwi Kuncoro of Indonesia in the first round, before causing some real havoc by defeating Kenichi Tago of Japan. He is currently ranked 41st in men’s singles.
K Srikanth, 19
Known for his sharp and destructive strokes, the 125th ranked men’s singles player is seen as a boy who could make big headway, but it comes with an asterisk mark. Prone to injuries, Srinath’s rise will depend solely upon his fitness and also his wavering stamina. He won the Maldives Challenge earlier this year.
B Sai Praneeth, 19
Amongst this lot, Praneeth is known to have the greatest control over the shuttle, even from the most audacious of angles. Another Indian in the top men’s 100 (currently 72nd), Praneeth’s wide range of strokes makes him not just an exciting prospect, but also one who is easy on the eye with his elegant play.
Tarun Kona, 20
An out-and-out doubles specialist, Kona is Ashwini Ponappa’s partner in mixed doubles and the young pair have their sights set on emulating, if not bettering, the achievements of Jwala Gutta and V Diju. For one, Kona is well under a decade younger than Diju and if their showing in the India Open is an indicator, then success is perhaps just around the bend.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / Home> Story / by Aditya Iyer / Sunday, August 12th, 2012
