My first posting was as a Deputy Collector in Bijnore district of Uttar Pradesh. A suite of rooms in Stubbs Club became my abode. It opened on the Tennis Court. I had my first lessons in Tennis there. But the hockey stick continued to enjoy primacy over the Tennis racket for the next about twenty years. I had lost none of y stamina which was the main plank of my prowess in hockey and concurrently in Tennis.
Out of the clerks in the Collectorate I knit together a hockey outfit. Inspired by the founder-captain the team was upbeat. The lesson was driven home again that team-work among average players pays more dividends than a galaxy of loosely strung brilliant players.
At that time, perhaps because of some incidents, no love was lost between the Collectorate and the district police the respective hockey teams were spoiling for a fight. They met soon enough in the finals of a hotly contested hockey tournament in Nibataur, one of the outlying towns of the district. The Police Team was led, traditionally, by the senior-most police officer in the team, Govind Chandra, Dr, S.P. (He later rose to be the Director General of Police, U.P.). I had the babus. They were afire. The police team had all the advantages on its side, practice, physique, strength, speed, stamina. Our team was a bunch of pen-pushers. Its only asset was enthusiasm abounding.
We started as underdog but lo and behold our forwards led by a boyish officer raided the Police goal in wave after wave. Ultimately we succeeded in piercing the Police Defence. We scored once and the Police efforts to liquidate the lead turned out to be abortive
The citzens of Nibtaur who had assembled in large numbers and who were feeding fat an old grudge against the local police celebrated the Collectorate’s victory by taking us out in a triumphant procession. It cut the police to the quick. Govind Chandra expressed his feeling in an aside to me.
I stayed in Bijnore for the normal gestation period of a child in the mother’s womb. But the Bijknore Collectorate Club team did not look back. It marched from strength to strength. Our subsequent exploits and misadventures in hockey will be narrated when we meet next.
Let us now enlarge the canvas and switch over from the past to the present. Indian Hockey squad for the 2000 Olympics have been lodged at the small New South Wales Town of Murwillanbah. They feel at thome in the midst of Sikh banana farmers who the report says are looking after their culinary needs. A word of caution is needed here. Let them stay slim and fit if they are not eager to become fattged calves for the sacrificial altar.