The good bad-minton

What is it that you gain by running to the nook and corner of a 44’ by 17’ rectangular area dissected by lines running parallel and perpendicular to the base lines? You are also restricted to one half of the above mentioned space by two 5’ 1” vertical posts and a 20 mm thick fine cord net with a width of 2’ 6” running across them. All you get to do is hit a crazy feather-y object which is nothing but a cork base covered with a thin layer of leather, on which 16 feathers of approx 70 mm length are fixed, weighing just 5.5 grams. You don’t even get to hit it with ur bare hands, u need to use a frame which is nothing but a circular head with a pattern of crossed guts connected to it, and a handle attached to it, with an overall length of 680 mm.

So, that exactly is what me and many men and women like me like do when we are in the company of one another. Following the foot steps of greats like Allan Budi Kusumo, Joko Supriyanto and our very own Prakash Padukone.

I used to take pride in counting myself as a good (rather very good) badminton player, until I played with Aldrin, my Mumbai roomie… I used to be the school, town, PU college and Engg hostel champion. All the pride shattered like glass when I had my first encounter with Aldrin in the EdenWoods indoor court. 15 – 3. Cant call that a one sided game, right? ;_). One hell of an athlete who wins due to his stamina and will power. I had never seen my smashes being returned with such ease. Then there was this guy Anand. A tactical player with beautiful drops and professional serves.

Aldrin used to drag me to the court on weekends… 1 full bundle of shuttle, juice cartons, chocolates… To EdenWoods indoor court. We used to play for hours together. Often singles against each other. Anand used to join once in a while.

Patni badminton championship was announced and we decided to take the plunge. The three of us and we needed two girls also to form a team of 5. We were lucky enuf to get Sheebs and Laks on our side. They hadn’t played much, but had the will power to learn and master the art in the available short time period. Even though I the boaster suggested names like “Spikers”, “Smashers”, “Serves and Servlets” etc etc for the team, humble Aldrin settled for the modest name “Amateur Shuttlers”.

Practice sessions… 6 o clock bus home… practice till 10 in the night… there were some 5 or 6 teams from our locality, so around 30, 35 people used to be there in the court. It was fun… playing to ur hearts content. Showing off ur smashes, jumps and what not to the female players ;_) and getting those “Wow”s ;_)).

Championship began. 5 people per team. Qualifying rounds. 1 mens singles, 1 womens singles, 1 mixed doubles. Semis and Finals will have womens and mens doubles as well. Aldrin volunteered for the singles. Anand and me for doubles and Either of us and sheebs for mix doubles.

Qualifying rounds were cake walks. Aldrin and Sheebs used to win hands down. Anand and me used to be like”Show off before the match..” ,”high serves”, “smashes”… kind of like crowd entertainers. Other teams were like, “These ‘amateurs’ are damn good… Aldrin is playing damn well; even the 2 guys who havnt played are doing wonders during practice”. Everything was going great. We were having fun. We got into semis easily, without Anand or me playing a single match, but all the while showing off ;_) He used to do his ‘lovely’ net drops from all across the court and I used to do my ‘jump smashes’ from back courts…

The all important Semis!!! We against the title holders, the Dare Devils… They had one of the best female players of Patni. She used to play professionally. So our hope was in winning the mens singles and doubles and mixed doubles, as we were sure that the ladies only events wont come our way.

First match. Aldrin Vs their captain. He too was a mallu, who was not as good as Aldrin on court. But he had the experience of playing in many tourneys. He started using all possible negative tactics, like taking breaks when Aldrin was ready to serve, serving before Aldrin was ready, distracting him, arguing with teh referee and a million other things. Aldrin got irritated and got carried away. End result, he lost the match which we were sure to win. Ok.. Ayway… We still had 4 matches left. Next was mens doubles. Anand and me on the court for our first real match of the tournament. Our confidence level was sky high before the match, not after it started. My jump smashes ended at the nets. My serves landed right in the front box. Even Anand had a bad day in office. Whatever could go wrong went wrong. We were also defeated in straight sets. The rest of the story was predictable as they had the woman champ who defeated our ladies singles player in a rather one sided match. That sums up my Patni baddy championship story, which started as a hilarious comedy but ended as a tragedy. Our hopes which had grown fat like a Hot Air Balloon dropped all of a sudden to sub zero levels, much like this elaborately started but abruptly ended blog post.