Novice DTEA Mandir Marg defeats GHPS

The ground just overlooks the skyscraper The Lalit hotel, a five-star luxury where Hockey India conducts all its business and also holds all its press conferences. But it is sure those high-fis would never know the ground that looks down in the northern portion of the Modern School, known famously as Barakhamba Modern School.

Its is full-size natural grass ground. The local schools boys were preparing for hockey and cricket, as the new sports season starts with customary sporting events under the jurisdiction of Education Department.

The zone 26 in which the central Delhi schools falls is very important. Important because all the four synthetic turfs the two historic stadiums – Major Dhyan Chand National and Shivaji – lie in this zone. However, the luxury of turf do not reflect in the schools in the areas, hardly two or three of them playing hockey.

This year OTHL introduced hockey in two schools – DTEA and Raisina Bengali – which falls in Zone 23. We also requested the games teachers of these two school to enter the zonal competition. They were reluctant but obliged.

Two cars – one, DTEA Games Teacher, Krishnan’s and the other this writer’s – brought all the boys to the famous ground.

The hosts Modern Schools’ Games teacher, a magnanimously nearing-60 lady, said. “When I saw the DTEA’s name in the fixture, I thought they won’t turn up. Because, as long as I remember they never had a hockey team”.

Games teacher of the DTEA, Mr. Krishnan, was ready with an retort. “You see, I studied in this DTEA school. Now am teacher there for about 20 years. At least in this whole spell of 30 years, we never had a hockey team. So, mere participation in the Zone itself is history for us, and we are here today”.

The boys who entered in the Sub-Junior category are not interested in the talks taking place in another part. They are busy with warming up and rolling the ball. I spoke to couple of them. “You never played a match so far. You did not even go for a match with neighbour school, Raisina. All of a sudden you will now be playing it against famous Guru Harikishen school. Will you play well?”. They replied in chorus, “Sir we will win”.

There was spark in their eyes, exuberance in the action. But, will their enthusiasm match their calibre? Is winning a child’s play, I wondered myself.

Only today, Hockey Citizen Group, which introduced hockey at DTEA under its flagship One Thousand Hockey Legs, provided the team with a new goal-keeping kit. A goalie was identified after this huge purchase! A bespectacled tall boy was groping in dark as to how fit into the new avtar. Often his spectacles got into the head-gear, and could not see properly. It took time for him to put things in proper shape.

Meanwhile, the match started.

From the first move their rivals entered the D, but the defence of DTEA – simple logic here is put all the best players there – stood up. Thereafter, another 15 minutes – which is halftime here – DTEA surprised everyone. Short passes, sometimes hard hits, hot chases, and a passion to ball possession saw them finishing the first half without scoring or conceding – though at one stage it appeared their centre-forward Ashish was almost through with a goal.

Every time the ball entered the circle, everyone shouted mar mar, and the forwards obliged only to their peril. Controlled shots at the goal were missing. I thought mar mar shrill is going to mar the winning chances of this novice outfit. But thankfully it was not.

Second half was panic session for the famed rivals.

The novices never know the reputation of their rivals, simply because they are not aware of it. They just came to play and win, they simply stuck to it.

Set up by dimuntive dynamo on field, Piyush Vashist — he skipped his regular session in National stadium to play this match — Ashish scored a goal.

This elicited wide celebration on and off the field. I and volunteer Rakhee were in heavens. yes, our school has just scored, what a feeling it has been.

But tense moments followed. The rivals were not giving up. They crowded their own circle, and it proved disaster. Umpires Mukesh and Rahul had to often call for dangerous play and five-yard rule violations, which infused life into the DTEA school again.

Vinesh, Ganesh, Rohit, Shahruk, Ram and his brother Bharat all came up with good interceptions. There were some hard hit clearances which were lapped up with Ganesh doing lot of upfront work, Vashisht again moved like a mouse in a furniture room, not getting into the stick of others and easily eluding their tacklers.

A sudden spurt saw a loose ball in the circle. Even as everyone thought Ashish will miss it, he did in the first attempt but latched on to a rebound and sent the ball across the net. Its goal number two, unbelievable, unbelievable.

Rajinder Singh, Games teacher of Raisina Bengali School, rushes to the sidelines unable to hide his excitement. “Well done boys”, shouted he even as others looked at his child’s act with fun.

So, finally, its reality. The school that does not have a hockey in the last 40 years have one now. Not only that it won a hard match

A small success for the One Thousand Hockey Legs. Life is celebration of small successes, so let us do it. And we did. A good bill was paid at the nearby Saravanabhawan hotel.

The DTEA boys are enjoying it. Everyone of them ready to play tomorrow despite school having holiday on account of some AAdi 18.

Now, they look forward to the semis against Raisna Bengali school tomorrow.

The point here is, the two schools which never had a hockey team in many many decades, will be seen in semis.

Great going.