Maybe, she and her game-buddies are not glamorous enough. Maybe it’s their loose playing-attire and conservative, comfortable round-necks. Maybe, it’s because basketball players don’t wear short skirts with smart slits. But India’s brightest woman hoopster Geethu Anna Jose often wonders why she walks the streets of home-town Kottayam - she’ll talk of the rest of India, later- but never manages to turns heads.

The first Indian woman to play professionally in a foreign league - she had featured for two seasons with the Australian Division 2 Ringwood Hawks. The 23-year-old was even good enough to be picked to play with Dandenong Rangers in the Australian WNBL, the world’s second-best basketball league behind American WNBA. Still, she’s not quite the easily recognized face on India’s sporting-scape where the Girls Aloud pack of India’s racket-sports - Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal, Joshna Chinappa and the uber-glamorous Dipika Pallikal dominate popular mind-space.

It stumps her that when Athlete A and Athlete B put in the same kind of physical effort into their chosen sport - and suffer the same strains and bruises on bones and muscles - one should turn into an overnight pin-up, while the other needs to yell her ‘international’ credentials everywhere.

She voices these concerns aloud with the same Bambi-eyed innocence of an Anjali flummoxed by the mascara-lipstick pros of her college hostel in the popular film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Now, that is Geethu’s favourite Bollywood film, though she digs the SRK-starrer for altogether different reasons - the track which focuses on the basketball content.

Geethu’s own Cinderella story has seen her go from the dusty outdoor cement rectangles of Chennai, where she turns out for Southern Railway — to raucous applause at the Ringwood Hawks concert stadium with MVP honors for a month and offers from bigger clubs. And promptly back to basketball on cement. At one stroke of a diktat from those who manage basketball affairs at Indian Railways, she had to return home to a competition - which was quite honestly a fair few notches below her own standards of play. It’s a regret she’s living with, even as her story doesn’t look headed towards a fairytale end.

Studying at Mount Carmel in Kottayam, hoping to end up as an engineer and voraciously reading Malyalam literature on the sides, Geethu was prepared for the mundane. Shooting-up in height faster than her class-mates she knew she’d bring up the rear in her class-assembly lines, but she tried her hand - long legs, rather - at athletics, high jump and hurdles, anyways. A basketball coach forced her to consider the most obvious sport going by her frame, and within a year of taking to the hoops the towering girl was picked for the state squad - the junior India call-up not far away.

She knew she was tall, but Geethu had reckoned quite early that she was far different from other tall players. She wasn’t a stiff mover - athletics took care of flexing the muscles. And she was rather accurate a shooter for 6’2” - which came from hours of disciplined shooting drills, with typical Indian diligence.

Geethu traveled with the Indian juniors to Japan and China and Korea, but the big break came last year when she led the seniors into the Upper group of the Asian championship for the first time in many years scoring a stupendous 47 points in one game. In 2006 Commonwealth Games, she’d made an impression playing the Opals - the Oz women hoopsters - with Laura Jackson, the best player in the world currently in their ranks. India were slaughtered by a 100-odd points, but Geethu found her way into Victoria’s Ringwood side, a season into which she landed the offer with the Division 1 side Rangers.

The inside jump shot was a crowd-puller, as she adjusted to the power and the bullet-passes that are characteristic of the Aussies. A certain Indian diffidence took some effort to be shed, as she was expected to play more physical and get more vocal. A longer stint in Australia would’ve also helped her to sharpen her defense and understand a range of offensive structures, expanding on her attack inside the paint. This was far beyond what her brief was when playing in Indian sides - which relied excessively on her height and offense, though rebounds and the block-shot were her pet.

In India, Geethu averaged 35 points but never felt she was really doing much with her talent. In Australia, she was learning constantly, growing as a player, competing with the best, and content with 18-20 per game.

Hence, the Indian Railways decision to not grant her leave and let go of her - was baffling, at best. Geethu did pre-seasons with Rangers, but returned as she was denied leave or permission by her Indian employers. If the player is fated to live many days of regret, now the Australian WNBL teams would be reluctant to offer her another opportunity as she didn’t grab the one she was granted. The decision could prove detrimental to Indian players of the future wanting to play in Australia as well.

Geethu admits she would get home-sick when in Australia, got almost cosy sitting on the fence for too long, and there wasn’t anyone around really to guide her into the next step - to base herself in Australia. It’s not made her bitter though, and the tall girl stresses that her juniors would do well to aspire higher.