Powerlifter Gulshan Banu Kazi has not only made her native Udupi, India proud but also Dubai proud by securing a world record among the master category athletes in the Professional Raw Organisations Push-Pull Championship 2022, a national level event held in Bengaluru recently.
This sporting event held at Onyx Fitness was one of the most popular internationally sanctioned national powerlifting championships, consisting of three main events -Bench Press, Deadlifts and Push-Pull.
Record holder Gulshan Banu Kazi is a 43-year-old mother of three, working six days a week at a corporate office in Dubai.
A native of Udupi, she is from Udupi and an alumnus of St Cecily’s and PPC College here .
She is a competitive Powerlifter. Powerlifting is a form of competitive weightlifting in which the contestants attempt three types of lifts in a set sequence, squat, bench press, and deadlift.
Gulshan started powerlifting training in the year 2019.
The training is tough. She trains at least four times a week for about 90 minutes each time and keeps a watch on her nutrition intake and sleep pattern.
She has been participating in a powerlifting competition in UAE and did well there. One of her latest has been the Pro-League National Championship-2022 where she hit five personal records and registered a World Record in Deadlifts (U82.5kg Masters and Open Category) by pulling 180 kgs. She becomes the first woman of India in her age and her weight category to pull off this deadlift.
Last April, she participated in the WPC National Powerlifting Championship securing four gold medals in Bengaluru. Gulshan Kazi won the Best Lifter Award in the Masters’ category.
Gulshan used to be above 100 kgs till 2016 when she suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Resistance training and tracking her food intake enabled her to start losing weight and gaining muscle. Soon after, she was introduced to powerlifting and has been consistent at it ever since.
She is grateful to Raju Pal, her first coach who introduced her to powerlifting and taught her all the basics.
Now she is training under Mohammad Azmat who is a multiple-time national and international medalist in powerlifting, having won medals for India in different federations. He has been coaching her since 2020.
Gulshan Kazi is looking forward to her representation at World Championships and working hard to make India proud.
source: http://www.daijiworld.com / Daijiworld.com / Home> Middle East / by Daijiworld Media Network – DRD / March 22nd, 2022
Powerlifting champion Sk. Sadia Almas presenting a bouquet to Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy at Tadepalli on Tuesday.
Proposal for setting up a powerlifting academy at Mangalagiri approved
Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has announced a final assistance of ₹5 lakh on behalf of the Andhra Pradesh government for international powerlifting champion Shaik Sadia Almas.
Ms. Sadia, along with her father Samdhani, met Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy at his chamber in the Assembly . She won three gold medals and a bronze medal at the Asian Powerlifting Championships held at Istanbul in Turkey in December 2021.
Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy appreciated Ms. Sadia and approved the proposal of establishing a powerlifting academy in her hometown of Mangalagiri. He said that the government would make all efforts to encourage athletes in the State.
Sports Minister M. Srinivasa Rao, Mangalagiri MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy, Special Chief Secretary Rajat Bhargava and others were present on the occasion.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> National> Andhra Pradesh / by Tharun Boda / Vijayawada – March 22nd, 2022
Sarfaraz Khan has rained runs in the domestic circuit. | Photo Credit: VIVEK BENDRE
Living father Naushad’s dream, hitting 400 balls every day, driving across north India to find a game or practice session during the lockdown, never settling for just a hundred — the prodigious Mumbai run-scorer offers an insight into his life and methods
You may have come across the 3 Ps and 3 Ds in self-help books. Sarfaraz Khan, the record-breaking Mumbai run machine, has been performing such exceptional feats that he deserves new terminology devised especially for him.
A kid from the by-lanes of Kurla, a central Mumbai suburb, Sarfaraz isn’t one for corporate jargon; he prefers ‘Bambaiya’ lingo. But having tracked his cricketing sojourn for over a decade, one can sum him up in the 4 Os: Obsession, Outstanding, Occupation and Opportunity. Let’s look at each of these facets.
Obsession
Hours after being adjudged the Player of the Match in Mumbai’s final Ranji Trophy league game in Ahmedabad, Sarfaraz reaches his home in Taximen’s Colony in Kurla at around 10 p.m. The first thing he asks his father Naushad is whether the ‘nets’ are booked for the morning.
At 7 a.m. the next day, Sarfaraz is padded up at the Karnatak Sporting Association at Azad Maidan, ready for the daily drill of facing at least 200 balls in the session (he will repeat this dose on a makeshift turf pitch outside his house in the afternoon).
This is the routine Sarfaraz has followed ever since he was hailed as a ‘boy wonder’ in Mumbai’s school cricket circles a decade ago. The 24-year-old has had a topsy-turvy ride though. He has enjoyed the high of playing two Under-19 World Cups and being retained by an IPL franchise ahead of an overhaul. Then came a challenging phase when he left Mumbai for Uttar Pradesh before returning to the domestic powerhouse and establishing himself as a vital cog.
Sarfaraz’s stupendous success — he averages a staggering 77.74 in First Class cricket — has been driven by his determination and maturity at the crease. But the stocky batter says the runs are also a consequence of trying to repay his father’s faith and hard work. In many ways, he has been living his father’s dream.
Sarfaraz Khan at Cross maidan. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
“I have struggled quite a lot. Especially with Abbu. Even after playing two World Cups, the IPL, to be lined up alongside 400-odd cricketers for selection trials (in Uttar Pradesh in 2016-17) and wear the badge of player No. 315, it was quite weird. I used to feel bad for Abbu. We used to stay in a hotel and Abbu would have sleepless nights,” says Sarfaraz, having taken a break from his morning drill and made way for Naushad, who has padded up to ensure the “net bowlers don’t feel like wasting their time”.
“He has worked so hard on me that I feel I have to do it for Abbu. I don’t know whether I will eventually end up playing for India but I want all his hard work to pay off. That’s what I am striving for. He has left everything for our cricket, so I am glad that he has that [chance] to see his son scoring so heavily in Ranji Trophy, that too for a team like Mumbai. To play for Mumbai in itself is a big deal. And to be able to play again means a lot.”
For a sense of the family’s obsession with cricket, sample this: during the pandemic-enforced lockdown, Naushad drove his sons and a couple of local net bowlers in an SUV all the way to Azamgarh, his ancestral town in Uttar Pradesh, to ensure they stayed playing cricket. For the next year or so, the Khans would drive to every town and city across north India that offered the opportunity to play a practice game or have an outdoor net session.
“Be it Meerut, Mathura, Ghaziabad, Azamgarh…. he would drive us all over north India. In Mumbai, people couldn’t drive down for two hours and here we were, travelling all over India in our car to play cricket,” Sarfaraz says.
“Abbu would drive us all over so that our cricket didn’t stop. Sometimes when I travel to other places in the north — be it Delhi or Jaipur or Mohali — I feel as if it’s a home game and not away. I am so used to playing in those conditions that acclimatisation is never an issue.”
Outstanding
You cannot separate Naushad — a former Western Railway cricketer who has devoted his life to moulding Sarfaraz and his younger brother Musheer, an all-rounder, into classy cricketers — from Sarfaraz’s cricketing journey. But this day is about Sarfaraz. And Naushad realises it and doesn’t intervene even once when Sarfaraz is chatting with The Hindu.
Sarfaraz Khan at Cross maidan. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
Ask the plain-speaking Sarfaraz how well he remembers his First Class hundreds and pat comes the reply: “Six centuries… ek (one) triple, three doubles because a triple is also counted as a double. And every century is 150-plus, the one I scored for UP was 150 (155), it is the lowest.”
He says it as a matter of fact. But his returns since returning to Mumbai in January 2020 after a three-year hiatus are gargantuan: 1,564 runs in 15 innings at 142.18! And he isn’t a wee bit surprised by his phenomenal consistency, be it for Mumbai or for India-A against an all-international bowling attack in South Africa.
“I used to score heavily in school cricket, so it feels the same. I have done the same all my life, be it at Azad Maidan or a club ground or at a big stadium, I just am used to going through the motions and scoring runs,” he says.
“Every day brings a new challenge, a new ball, a new set of bowlers and it just doesn’t feel like I scored a hundred yesterday. It just feels like I have to work all over again and go through the routine and the process all over again and score runs. That’s what I have done since school cricket and since I started training with Abbu.”
And what’s the secret behind his daddy hundreds? The response offers a peek into his mindset.
“A lot of players tend to play a rash stroke after getting to the hundred. Once I celebrate the hundred, I keep telling myself — obviously every batter wants to score a hundred — ‘your aim is achieved, now do it for the team by converting it into a big one’.
“Also, there are so many quality players who score hundreds,” he says. “If you want to stand out, you have to score big hundreds, so I wait for four-five balls after the hundred and then start playing freely. Till the 100, I tend to plan in 10s, once I cross the 100, I start looking at it in 20s or 30s because every 20-30 runs that I add, not only will I get to another milestone but I will be taking the team to safety.”
Occupation
In addition to being obsessed with making it big as a cricketer and living his father’s dream, a changed batting outlook has also helped Sarfaraz. He has begun treating the match as his “office” and batting as his “job”. He refers to a dialogue from M.S. Dhoni’s biographical feature film: “Duty ke baad bhi practice (Your practice continues even after office hours)”.
“For me, it’s duty ke pehle and office ke baad bhi practice (it’s practice both before and after office),” he says. “I don’t have an off day. If I am not playing a match, I face at least 400 balls a day once Daddy wakes me up at 5 a.m.”
So how does he put his astounding form into perspective? “I have always been grounded, whether I score or not. I know that you enjoy when you perform well but there are always more sad days in life. That’s why we don’t tend to get excited. Even when I score, I don’t throw parties, nor do I attend anyone else’s. I don’t celebrate my birthday, nor do I attend someone else’s birthday party,” Sarfaraz says.
“My Daddy says, ‘You have so many followers and fans, so if you end up being friends with everyone, someone will have his or her birthday. So if you attend a birthday party every day, when will you play cricket?’ So I don’t go out much nor does our household get over-excited with any achievement. For us, doing well is like our daily job. And I’ve been learning something every day. But I keep telling myself two things: not to repeat the same mistake and follow whatever Daddy says.”
Opportunity
As someone who adapts to red-ball and white-ball formats as seamlessly as he switches between “Abbu” and “Daddy” when he refers to Naushad, Sarfaraz is making a strong case for an India call-up. One can sense that he desperately desires that India cap, especially with the sensational form he has been in, but he spells his position out calmly.
“There would be at least 500 cricketers toiling around us here at the maidan right now. And each one of us aspires to play for India. Whenever the chance comes, I have to be ready for it. That’s all that I am prepping for. If I can do it, I know I shall make my Daddy happy. And that’s what matters the most,” Sarfaraz says, before padding up again and replacing Naushad in the nets.
While Sarfaraz’s range-hitting keeps fielders and bystanders on their toes, Naushad expresses the hope that Sarfaraz gets a chance at the earliest in his new IPL franchise, the Delhi Capitals.
Had the Ranji Trophy not been postponed due to the Omicron variant, Sarfaraz could well have triggered a bidding war instead of being bought at base price in the accelerated auction. But as he starts walking towards his father’s SUV — the same one that had turned into his virtual home-cum-cricket room during the lockdown — Sarfaraz has a parting shot.
“It’s not about the money. It’s about the opportunity.”
With the dazzling form and frame of mind he is in, don’t be surprised if Sarfaraz adds ‘Optimisation’ to his 4 Os the moment he gets an opportunity in the IPL.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sport> Cricket / by Amol Karhadkar / March 19th, 2022
SM Jaffar was one of India’s finest hockey players in an era when the country reached near invincibility in the sport.
In the warm southern California summer of 1932, a group of young and colourfully-dressed athletes caught the attention of the residents of the Olympic host city. Angeleños, as the residents of Los Angeles were called at that time, had been expecting to see exotic looking foreigners, but even so, it would have been hard for many of them to not take a second look at turbaned Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus from faraway India.
Accounts from diaries from the 1930s suggest that one 20-year-old with his trademark moustache and turban caught the attention of both athletes and fans. This hockey player from Shergarh, in what was then the Montgomery district of western Punjab, was one of the rising stars of the Indian hockey team: Sayed Mohammed Jaffar Shah (SM Jaffar), who played the left-out (forward) position.
Like his teammates, who undertook the 42-day journey by ship from Colombo to California, SM Jaffar could have easily been distracted by the attractions that Hollywood offered, but his focus on the hockey was unwavering. “This charming athlete from India, this sheikh from the deserts of Montgomery, this man who carried with him something of an atmosphere of vast extensive plains and cornfields and open air wherever he went, attracted many admirers,” writer Syed Ahmed Shah, better known as Patras Bokhari, wrote in an essay in the 1930s. “But this stranger with a manly moustache had the modesty of a village virgin that was both fascinating and forbidding.” SM Jaffar was Bokhari’s student at the Government College in Lahore.
Jaffar had a reputation of being a disciplinarian to the core. He even eschewed coffee, as his only attempt at drinking the beverage resulted in the loss of an entire night of sleep. “Myriads were the temptations in the way of a young man so far away from his mother and his father and his friends and dear ones at home,” Jaffar was quoted as saying by Bokhari.
The hockey player, who was a hawking and hunting enthusiast and a regular patron of Amritsar’s hawk sellers, chose to spend his free time in Los Angeles visiting the zoo and the city’s lion farm.
It was a foregone conclusion that the Indian team, which won the gold medal in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, would crush the only two opponents – the Unites States and Japan. Like the ongoing Tokyo Olympics, which have lost their sheen because of the global pandemic, the Los Angeles games had reduced participation on account of the Great Depression. Only 37 nations participated in the 1932 Olympics, compared to 46 in Amsterdam four years earlier. The Indian team, divided by groupism between Anglo-Indians and others (the captaincy went to Lal Shah Bokhari), beat the United States 24-1 and Japan 11-1 to win the gold.
“I have had the privilege of seeing many cuttings from American newspapers and I can say without the least fear of contradiction that no other player was more popular, more skilful and more highly praised than Jaffar, with perhaps the solitary exception of Dhyan Chand,” Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah, who was Jaffar’s teacher at Lahore’s Aitchison College, wrote in 1937.
Shah, who would later become the principal of the prestigious Lahore institution, added, “…and what was true at Los Angeles, was equally true at the time of the Olympic Games in Berlin.”
Dhyan Chand runs away with the ball in an Olympic contest. Credit: Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain]
Road To Berlin
After returning to Lahore, Jaffar immersed himself in his studies. He completed his degree and was appointed Extra Assistant Commissioner of Lahore and even took the Indian Police Competitive Examination. His hockey career also continued to flourish. By 1936, he was the captain of the Punjab hockey team at the inter-provincial hockey tournament in Calcutta.
The tournament, won by host Bengal, was used as a selection criterion for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In a country which had several strong hockey sides such as Bengal, Bombay, Bhopal and Manavdar, just two players from Punjab were selected – Jaffar and Gurcharan Singh. Despite a request from the hockey authorities, the Indian Army initially refused to grant superstar Ali Iqtidar Shah Dara leave to play for the national side.
When it was time to select the captain of the Indian team, there were three candidates: Dhyan Chand, Jaffar and Manavdar’s MN Masood. “The IHF [Indian Hockey Federation] met at Delhi sometime in April to select the captain and officials of the tour,” Dhyan Chand wrote in his 1952 autobiography. “For the office of the captain, three names were put up – Jaffar, MN Masood and myself. Jaffar subsequently withdrew in my favour.”
It is widely accepted that the 1936 Indian team was the greatest to ever take the field in the history of the sport. Two-time defending champions, they were the favourites to win the gold, but the German side was a formidable opponent.
1936 :: Indian Hockey Team That Won Gold Medal In Berlin Olympics .
In Final, India Defeated Germany 8-1
In Tournament India Scored 38 Goals , Dhyan Chand Scored 13 Goals and His Younger Brother Roop Singh Scored 9 Goals
9:49 PM – Aug 1, 2021
_______
Panic seized the Indian team when they lost a warm-up game to the Germans by a score of 4 to 1. Dhyan Chand and Jaffar requested the army to release Dara for the tournament, and the legend was flown in to Germany a day before the semi-final. Till that point, India had little trouble in the tournament, easily defeating Japan, Hungary and the United States. The champions then crushed France 10-0 in the semis.
The final between India and Germany was witnessed by 40,000 spectators , most of them cheering for the home side.
India had some supporters in the stand too, including members of the Baroda and Bhopal royal families as well as some Indians who lived on the continent. The clinical performance of the Indian team, which won 8-1, threw the theory of Aryan Supremacy to the bottom of the Spree River that runs through the centre of Berlin. In a match where Dhyan Chand scored three goals, Dara added two and Jaffar contributed to the tally with a solitary goal. India could have easily scored more, but Dhyan Chand decided to give the “rough” Germans a “lesson in ball control” and the Indian team toyed with their opponents, moving the ball around endlessly.
“During the tour, he was a very great asset to the team, both on and off the field, and was highly praised by the German press,” Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah wrote about Jaffar. “…He was Dhyan Chand’s right hand man and extremely useful in maintaining the morale of the team.”
The Olympic gold in hockey would stay in the subcontinent until 1972, with India winning gold in 1948, 1952, 1956 and 1964 and Pakistan doing so in 1960 and 1968.
A Tragic End
Unlike Olympic legends, Dhyan Chand and Ali Dara, SM Jaffar, who was at the peak of his athletic abilities in the mid-1930s, would not live to see the departure of the British from the subcontinent.
On the morning of March 21, 1937, Jaffar, an avid hunting enthusiast, went on a duck shoot with his friends on the banks of the Ravi River, near Lahore. The Olympian waded into the river to retrieve a duck that his dog was unable to get. Unknown to the party, the duck fell near a whirlpool in waist-deep water. Jaffar was sucked in, and his boots got caught in the reeds in the water. Despite being a skilled swimmer, he could not set himself free. The two-time Olympic gold medallist drowned in front of his friends in the Ravi. He was 25.
“It is too painful for me to recall here the incident of his most tragic death, which has deprived us of a brilliant ‘Old Boy’ of whom we were all unreservedly proud; no institution will mourn the death of Jaffar more than Aitchison College, of whose products he was the finest example,” Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah wrote.
SM Jaffar is remembered as an all-time hockey great in Pakistan. As a tribute to his contribution to hockey, Aitchison College constructed a hockey pavilion in 1939. The Ali Institute of Education in Lahore organises an annual hockey tournament in his name. In India, however, his name is known only among the diehard hockey fans of a much older and dying generation. Perhaps a celebration of the legacy of such common heroes of the subcontinent would act as a catalyst for better relations between the South Asian countries?
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer and independent journalist, based in Mumbai. He is a Kalpalata Fellow for History & Heritage Writings for 2021.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Remembering History / by Ajay Kamalakaran / August 06th, 2021
Ours is the only nation in the world to have three major film stars with the surname Khan who can proudly boast of having another famous person with the exact same name
The arrival of Tamil Nadu cricketer Shahrukh Khan, whose ₹9 crore IPL deal catapulted him into mainstream attention, marks another proud moment in the rise of India as a nation of unique global status and importance.
This makes us the only nation in the world to have three major film stars with the surname Khan who can proudly boast of having another famous person with the exact same name. A world record.
Until the advent of Shahrukh Khan (the cricketer, not the actor), Shah Rukh Khan (the actor, not the cricketer) must undoubtedly have been at least mildly jealous of Salman Khan (the actor, not the…er…you get the drift) for having another Salman Khan (the Khan academy guy) and of Aamir Khan (the actor) for possessing an equivalent Amir Khan (the boxing champ). It cannot possibly be easy being the only superstar named Khan without a 1:1 mapping to another celebrity from a completely different walk of life. It must have been keeping him up at night. He might have been scouring social media to find at least one other Shahrukh Khan with some potential for global fame. Thankfully, his heart will now be at peace.
Surely, this landmark that India has achieved will trigger the envy of other so-called world powers like the United States and China, who have always been resentful of our glorious ancient past and our recent rise as a modern economic and cultural force. It is possible that, even as you read this, foreign powers are conspiring to unearth some pastry chef named Tom Cruise or cryptocurrency baron named Jackie Chan, just to discredit and defame India.
There are already negative-minded people who are pointing out discrepancies in the corresponding Khan names, just in order to take the sheen off India’s record. “You will notice that the cricketer goes by Shahrukh as a single name, unlike the actor who has carelessly inserted a space between the Shah and the Rukh. So it doesn’t really count” they might argue. “There’s an extra A in Aamir Khan’s name, which the boxing dude is clearly lacking” they may complain. But, to quote Inigo Montoya (and you should always quote Inigo Montoya when you get the chance), I reply with “Don’t bother me with trifles”. Only a cynic or an anti-national would allow such bothersome technicalities to detract from the collective joy that always springs forth from national triumph.
But the statistics don’t lie, as clearly demonstrated by official numbers on unemployment, GDP and COVID-19 cases in Uttar Pradesh, and they present irrefutable evidence that no other country even comes close to us. Some desperate people will point to the UK radio host named Chris Evans, or to the fact that Katy Perry and Michael Keaton were originally named Katy Hudson and Michael Douglas respectively, or to how Michael B. Jordan can be Michael Jordan — but they’re missing the point entirely. Anyone with a keen understanding of maths, such as Salman Khan (the Khan academy guy, not the actor), Nirmala Sitharaman, or Byju Raveendran can point out the critical feature in India’s Khan collection — all six celebrities in the set share the same surname. Like Don Bradman’s batting average, or the number of hero roles played by Prem Nazir, it’s a record that’s probably never going to be broken.
If T. Rajender were to sum up the whole thing, he might say, “All the other countries are incomplete, but India is the only country that is khancomplete.”
Anand Ramachandran is a Chennai-based writer and game designer who likes playing games with his writing.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion> The Portzebie Papers / by Anand Ramachandran / March 12th, 2022
Shams Mulani has silenced all his critics with his sterling performance in the Ranji Trophy.
FILE PHOTO: Mumbai bowler Shams Mulani during a Ranji Trophy match at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. – THE HINDU ARCHIVES
He made his First Class debut in 2018-19. He was Mumbai’s highest wicket-taker in the Ranji Trophy the following season.
Still, Shams Mulani ,the all-rounder, has always had to deal with murmurs of primarily being a white-ball bowler. Over the last fortnight, Mulani has silenced all his critics with his sterling performance bowling left-arm spin.
Mulani has picked a whopping 22 wickets in the first two league stages, including three consecutive five-wicket hauls. As a result, he is topping the wicket-takers’ chart in the Ranji Trophy. The southpaw, who is a couple of weeks shy of turning 25, hopes his performance versus Saurashtra and Goa should end the debate about spin-bowling skills in the longer format.
“I think it should because I never felt I was only a white-ball bowler. I feel that I am versatile and I can play all three formats pretty well as a bowler. That’s what I am trying to do,” Mulani told Sportstar on Monday, a day after being adjudged Player of the Match for his 11-wicket haul and a crucial 50 in Mumbai’s second essay.
“The tags are always going to be there, critics are always going to say something, you can’t help it. You just have to do what you do… let the ball and the bat do the talking.”
It was impressive to see Mulani using the width of the crease versus Goa, sensing the pitch at the Narendra Modi Stadium was offering turn from outside off-stump to right-handers. “I can say it’s a sense of maturity. Being around for a while, I have started reading the conditions better. The key to pick wickets is to assess the conditions, the batters and change your plan accordingly. I am glad it’s coming off,” he said.
Mulani stressed despite little red-ball cricket in the last two years, it’s his beginning at the Bengal Cricket Academy at Shivaji Park that meant he continued to work hard even while bowling with the red ball.
“Even when the whole focus was on limited overs (he was a Covid-replacement for Axar Patel in IPL 2021’s first half), I make it a point to carry at least one red-ball in my kit-bag all the time,” Mulani said. “That’s the basics. We started off bowling with it as kids and that’s what is going to hold us in good stead in the long-run.”
source: http://www.sportstar.thehindu.com / Sportstar / Home> Domestic / by Amol Karhadkar / Ahmedabad – February 28th, 2022
Gopalganj Village (Seoni District), MADHYA PRADESH :
Arshad with his team. | Picture by arrangement
Bhopal :
Ashfaq Khan (63) and his wife Aliya Khan (56), residents of Seoni district of Madhya Pradesh’s Gopalganj, were glued to the television set watching the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction as the league had put his youngest son Arshad Khan’s name in the auction list of IPL players. With the completion of every auction, the duo eagerly waits to hear the next name which might be of their son’s.
With dim hope, Ashfaq, a retired teacher-turn-farmer, who wants to see his son in the Indian cricket team, left home for the mosque to offer evening Namaz (Magrib), pondering on the future of his son. As he completed the Namaz, his eldest son Zakariya Khan whispered, “Arsad ko Mumbai Indians team ne kharid liya hai. Wo IPL khele ga.”
Elated with the news, “I thanked Allah and offered namaz of shukrana,” recalled Ashfaq.
The left-arm seamer and left-hand batsman, Mohd Arshad Khan has been picked up by Mumbai Indians worth Rs 20 lakh in the mega auction of the 15th season of IPL 2022 held in Bangalore recently. His consistent performance in the Under-23 VK Naidu tournament organised by BCCI in the year 2020, Vijay Hazare Trophy and Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in the same year caught the eyeballs of the selectors.
In the VK Naidu tournament, Arshad took 36 wickets in 10 matches and also scored 400 runs. He shot into the limelight in 2019-20 when he took 5 wickets and scored a century, batting in the tail end. “The match was against Assam and my team had lost 7 wickets for 87 runs. I went in and scored 134 runs. That inning has been the best of my career,” said Arshad. He always punched above his weight, getting selected for under-14 when he was just 11-year-old.
It was an unforgettable moment for Ashfaq, who coached Arshad for almost eight years since he was eight-year-old. “He was born to be a cricketer. I saw a player in him when he performed well during a trial that took place in Chhindwara in 2008.”
With the selection in Mumbai Indians, Arshad became a superstar in his village as well as in the district. When an overwhelmed Ashfaq was rushing home, he was surrounded by the villagers who were rejoicing at Arshad’s selection. “It was like a village fair. Hundreds of people have gathered outside the home, crackers were burnt, drums have begun to beat and everyone is distributing sweets,” said Aliya, mother of Arshad.
Recalling the contribution of Arshad’s father, his mother Aliya said, “Cricket is an expensive game and there were occasions when his father purchased his cricket kit way more expensive than his month’s salary. Besides, the efforts of his coaches Abdul Kalam, from Seoni and his coaches in Indore — Shantanu Tripathi and Chandrakant Pandit —have polished his talent to become a good cricketer.”
Belonging to a humble background and youngest among the four siblings, Arshad and his family live in Gopalganj village, around 13-km from Seoni town. “Even Seoni didn’t have a proper turf, what to talk of my village when I began playing cricket,” said Arshad speaking over the phone. “I was in Gujarat when I got a phone call that you have been selected for Mumbai Indians.
“My phone was buzzing non-stop the day I got selected. I don’t even have time to speak with my father. It was the next morning when I spoke to him on a video call. He was blushing and smiling. It was an unforgettable smile which I have been waiting to see for years,” the budding cricketer Arshad giggled.
Talking about the struggle, Arsad said, “From 2017 to 2019, it was the years of despair. I had multiple injuries and have stopped playing cricket. But then my father encouraged me to restart afresh and boosted my morale. From that day to today, I never looked back.”
“The journey would have been much more difficult if my partner-in-dream; Ashfaq Khan, my father, did not stand beside me like a rock,” said Ashfaq adding that I want to live his dream and will play for the Indian cricket squad.
Madness for cricket has forced Arshad to quit education after matriculation. But, now, he is determined to resume his studies.
Just like Arshad, Kuldeep Sen, a son of saloon shop owner from Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa, was also auctioned in the the15th edition of IPL. Rajasthan Royals took him at a base price of Rs 20 lakh.
source: http://www.twocirlcles.net / TwoCircles.net / Home> Lead Story / by Kashif Kakvi, TwoCirlcles.net / Februrary 25th, 2022
Hyderabads Humera and Rashmikaa with the doubles trophies.
Hyderabad:
Hyderabad tennis players Shrivalli Rashmikaa and Humera Baharmus pair lifted the women’s doubles crown at the Haryana Women’s ITF $15k tennis tournament, in Gurugram on Saturday.
The talented youngsters, who were unseeded in the tournament, defeated top seeds Kovapitukted Punin of Thailand and Anna Ureke of Russia 6-3, 1-6, 10-3.
This is their maiden ITF women’s title. In the singles, Rashmikaa lost to Kovapitukted Punin in quarterfinals on Friday.
Sakibul Gani scored 341 runs off just 405 balls with the help of 56 fours and 2 sixes. He maintained a strike rate of 84.20.
Bihar’s 22-year-old batter Sakibul Gani etched his name on the history books by breaking the record for the highest individual score by a cricketer on first-class debut. Becoming the first batter to score a triple hundred on first-class debut, Gani amassed 341 runs off just 405 balls with the help of 56 fours and 2 sixes in a Ranji Trophy Plate Group match against Mizoram at Jadavpur University Campus 2nd Ground in Kolkata on Friday. He maintained a strike rate of 84.20.
The previous highest on first-class debut also belonged to an Indian. Madhya Pradesh’s Ajay Rohera held the record for more than three years. He had scored an unbeaten 267 against Hyderabad in Indore in December 2018. The third on the list is former Mumbai captain Amol Mazumdar. He had scored 260 on debut way back in the 1993-94 season.
Sakibul, who has a decent List A record with 377 runs in 14 matches, came in to bat at No.5 when Bihar were 71 for 3. He then forged a mammoth 538-run stand for the fourth wicket with Babul Kumar, who was unbeaten on 229 when Bihari decided to declare their first innings at 686 for 5.
On Day 1 of the Ranji Trophy on Thursday, Ajinkya Rahane scored a century for Mumbai in the match against Saurashtra.
Delhi batter Yash Dhull also registered a ton on his first-class debut against Tamil Nadu in Guwahati.
The Ranji Trophy would be held in two phases and now it has been confirmed that the pre-Indian Premier League (IPL) phase would run from February 10 to March 15. The post-IPL-phase would run from May 30 to June 26. The Ranji Trophy this season would see 64 matches being played across 62 days.
There are eight Elite Groups and one Plate Group. There would be four teams in Elite Groups and six teams would make up the Plate Group. One team from each Elite Group will qualify for the quarterfinal stages. The lowest-ranked of the eight qualified teams will have to play a pre-quarterfinal with the top team from the Plate Group.
(With ANI inputs)
source: http://www.sports.ndtv.com / NDTV Sports / Sports Home> Cricket> News / by NDTV Sports Desk / February 18th, 2022
Considered to be one of the academy’s finest students, Amena (name changed) makes it a point to train at least for three hours a day. A burqa-clad woman, she resolved to break the shackles of the oppression that is often wrongly associated with the piece of clothing. She is 39-year-old and one of the fifteen women in this boxing school between the ages of 35-50.
Surprisingly enough, both Amena and her 15-year-old son Uzair train together. “The duo gives each other a good fight in the boxing ring,” said their coach Shaikh Aijaz Ahmed.
A national-level gold medalist himself, Aijaz Ahmed set up Golconda Boxing Academy in 2002 at Owaisi playground, Golconda and has been giving free coaching to all. “I believe that women must train for boxing, as it is best for self-defence. I am glad that more women are willing to learn boxing at my academy,” he said.
As many as 150 students are enrolled in the academy as of now. Of them, there are children, young girls and married women.
35-year-old Naseema Begum believes ‘hijab’ is not an excuse to quit learning new things. “It is all about dedication and enthusiasm for learning and productivity,” Begum says. “Even if we don’t participate in any tournaments, it at least keeps us healthy and fit,” said 41-year-old Najma Sultana, who trains with her 6-year-old granddaughter.
Many women prefer to take these classes as a break from their routine and also because the classes are given for free.
Young girls between the ages of 13 – 20, seen in a headscarf, give a tough fight to the boys. Many of them are very keen on taking boxing as their career ahead too. One of them is Afsha Shah, a 14-year-old, who is already making a mark. She took part in the national and state-level games and won prizes. “At times these girls give a tough time to me as well,” Ahmed laughs, saying it also builds their character.
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It was Ahmed’s grandfather Subedar Major Shaik Ahmed inspired him to continue the tradition. “My grandfather dreamt of these changes in the community. He was a great boxer and even served the Army. My father Shaik Abdul Gani, participated in national-level tournaments before he retired from the army in 1980. He set up this Golconda Boxing Association in 1990,” Ahmed added.
source: http://www.siasat.com / The Siasat Daily / Home> Featured News / by Nihad Amin edited by Sruthi Vibhavan / January 21st, 2021
