On the ball

As Chandigarh Administrator Lt Gen J F R Jacob prepares to set up a hockey academy, Manraj Grewal looks back at his first love, a football school for boys with stars in their eyes and grit in their hearts

THE diminutive Gulshan Kumar reminds you of Maradona as he sweeps the ball into the goal in a single fluid movement. And then skids to the ground, hands clutching at the sky, face scarlet with rapture. Looking at him, it’s difficult to imagine that till about a year-and-a-half ago, this boy from a remote village in Punjab hadn’t even heard of football. Today he eats, drinks, sleeps, and breathes the game. And so do all the 24 golden boys at the Chandigarh Football Academy in Sector 42.

They are the chosen ones. Ten-to-12-year-old future football stars selected from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and the Union Territory of Chandigarh, to be part of what is touted as the first-of-its kind experiment in the country. And the pet project of Punjab Governor and UT Administrator Lt Gen J F R Jacob (retd). The young-at-heart octogenarian makes no bones about his soft spot for either ‘‘my boys’’ or the game. ‘‘I want this residential academy to be a nucleus for this game.’’ It’s his fond hope that the academy, which will train the boys for seven years, will produce a clutch of world-class players.

It’s to this ambitious end that the administration is spending more than Rs 75,000 a year on every child. The project got rolling in 2000 with the selection of the boys through an exhaustive two-tier process which had teams from the National Institute of Sports (NIS) trawling towns and villages, big and small. The boys were shortlisted and tested again at NIS, Patiala. Interestingly, most of the youngsters who made the cut came from Punjab, followed by those from Haryana, Himachal and brought up by a lone entry from Chandigarh.

‘‘The background of the boys is proof that we did not yield to any push or pull’’, says DC M Ramsekhar. Football certainly has been a great leveller here. The son of a senior sports official, a rich farmer, a postman, a cashier, a vegetable-seller... here they are equal both on and off the field.

The children know it. Which is why Rurka Kalan’s Sukhvinder Kumar, who lost his father in a terrorist attack, is held in such high esteem by his peers. And so is Amit Negi, the sinewy goalie whose father is a cashier in the city. The Governor, who now proposes to set up a hockey academy in June, is very clear that it’s an exercise in excellence, not charity. Which is why six of the boys were sent home in August when they failed to perform. As Ramsekhar puts it: ‘‘It’s not a scholarship scheme, the idea is to have a group of boys who do consistently well and are natural leaders in the game.’’

But that is not to say that everything else is sidelined by football. ‘‘We want well-rounded individuals and good schooling is essential if they want to score in the international arena’’, says Jacob, who ordered three tutors and a computer for the academy the moment he heard some stars had flunked.

Sunil Bhatia, director of the academy, blames the initial poor showing on the change in medium of instruction from Punjabi to English. ‘‘‘Now they’ve begun scoring well and some of them even top their class.’’ Aakib Javed, a 10-year-old fan of French master Zidane, is among them.

Bringing up so many juniors has not been easy. And no one knows it better than P Shaaji, their coach-cum-warden, who accounts for every minute they spend on and off the campus. ‘‘They were very raw and unruly when they came here... some of them didn’t even know how to use a toothbrush’’, he says. Well, Shaaji and a group of three matrons taught them this and other social etiquette.
Today, they are polished little gentlemen who mind their P’s and Q’s. Have decided views about David Beckham vis-a-vis Ronaldo. And can tell you which league matches will be telecast when. Chief coach Harjinder Singh, an international-level player who plays with them every morning and evening, is plum pleased with their progress and sees at least four world-class greats on the make.

Our boys are more optimistic, each with a burning desire to set the field ablaze. As Gulshan from Gokhar Fauji village in Gurdaspur district puts it: ‘‘Ji, I want to be a player... someone like Beckham, nothing else.’’

That’s the spirit.