Main sportsman banna chahta hoon !!!

Confession time. I am no athlete anymore. I have long ago evolved into the state where I prefer watching my favourite sports on TV to playing them in person. I am no gymnast. It has been years since I touched the floor without bending my knees. Stamina has gone extinct in me. If I run, by the beginning of third minute I could feel that my heartbeat makes a deafening noise and I start suspecting that froth would come out of my mouth and my heart would slip out via my mouth. I love my cola, chips and ice creams.

Even at schools and colleges, I was not much into sports. I used to play cricket. Predominantly tennis ball cricket. I realized that three stumps made too large a target to cover with the thin cricket bat. So I decided to make use of my discovery - to become a bowler and evade the thin defense to hit the large target. Then I found that I couldn’t generate much pace with the ball. I called myself a spinner. I decided to become a leg spinner when I found that bowling off-spin is quite painful for fingers. When I bowled my leg-spinners, the batsmen were sometimes surprised when the ball actually spun. They were surprised like hell when the ball spun like an off-break on a few occasions. Well, I too was equally surprised. I then started calling myself a leg-spinner with a lot of varieties. If you ask my friends, they would tell you that I was a bloody chucker. Please ignore them.

I hated fielding. Well, I was no Jonty Rhodes. I have this strong suspicion that I have invisible holes in my hands. Somehow I kept dropping the catches that came my way. My captain even started placing another fielder right next to me. The batsmen would look at me with a lot of hope and my team would look at me with distrust when the ball was hit in my direction. My team used to go on wild celebration on the few occasions when I somehow managed to hold on to the catches.

I played tennis for a brief period. I used to lose to everybody in the club. I never showed partiality in that matter. Be it a kid half my height and a third of my age or be it a senior citizen who was seriously thinking about getting a wheel chair for himself. I made them all winners.

Recently I got back to sports. Well, I should keep the alarming increase in my weight under control, shouldn’t I? In this process, I tried out some sports for the first time in my life.

I don’t trust the skating board. I am not ready to break my bones or scratch my skin. I said to myself that I am into losing some weight and skating would not serve that purpose. I am not into adventures.

Then there is volleyball. I think I need to practice a bit to get my fingering correct to get the overhand pass without slapping the ball and making a hell lot of noise in that process. Also the underarm pass is a bit painful.

I think football would serve my purpose just perfect. I get to run miles and kick the hell out of that damned ball. It is fun along with good workout. I found that my left leg isn’t very keen to obey my commands. Ha ha. I will teach my left leg a lesson or two. I should practice kicking with my left foot.

I love badminton. I think I have a flair for this sport. I see that a lot of others couldn’t play backhanded. Yippee! I can pretty well play backhand shots. May be it is because of my tennis experience. My flatmate said that he once dislocated his arm while playing badminton. What the hell. Badminton should be played like badminton, buddy. Not like boxing. Did I say I love badminton?