Sanwar Ali: Family Saviour Sanwar serves hockey in Services

Sanwar Ali is another of shy and soft spoken hockey player a sort of which one comes across in the domestic circuit quite often. His story also goes on familiar but interesting lines.
An youngster’s like for hockey, huge family background’s pressing needs to win bread even before establishing his credentials on the turf, and ultimately the youngster breaking into the age-group national teams are nearly the similar scripts that make up most hockey player’s profile, if only one takes pain to look at them closely.

Sanwar comes from a modest background in Gorakhpur where his father, Mohd. Ali, doubles up as farmer and milkman to support a family of eight. Sanwar only flashes an uninviting expression when probed about his financial condition back home.

Sanwar picked up a hockey stick in 1997 and kept playing on gravel ground. It was only in ’00 when he got selected for Sports Hostel, Lucknow that his hockey really took meaningful shape. The hostel offered boarding, lodging and uninterrupted access to the synthetic turf, besides a small annual stipend. Sanwar kept playing tournaments here and there for the next 5 years.

Had it not been the Subhedar recruitment in the Army six years ago, his family would have remained in a shamble. This job changed his life for better.

Thanks to this job, good training system (where fitness is a part of the daily life), boarding, lodging and a very good life (compared to his erstwhile below par life) have brought in some security to Sanwar and his family.

Sanwar, like many fringe players, hopes that someone will take note of his game in one of the domestic competitions and then, one fine day, will get to wear the jersey with tri-colored flag on it.

Playing alongside his team mates – S.Arumugam, M C Singh, Renial – Sanwar forms lethal attack line-up in the Army Red team.

The progress chart of Sanwar Ali – participation in Sub-Junior Nationals (2003), an IHF tournament in 2005, Under-18 National team for the Junior Asia Cup 2005 (the tournament got cancelled though), two goals for Chennai Veerans in the PHL 2007-08 followed by appearance in the Malaysia 8-Nation (Under-21, Silver ), and even further, a call to the Senior Selection Camp in 2008 under Joaquim Carvalho – proves he is striking right chord.

Sanwar, who turns 22 this February, takes interest in reading magazines, Hindi newspapers and is the darling of his coaches, but doesn’t know when will take the giant step that will catapult him to the national colors. Nationals, PHL don’t happen now – Sanwar doesn’t really know about their critical importance – so he expects that someday, someone, will take note of his worth.

Sanwar fondly remembers his mentors and coaches – Gopal Chand, AK Bansal, Joacquim Carvalho – and to a great extent his seniors like Shivendra Singh and Tushar Khandker for teaching him sharp skills like, cross pass from the flanks, dodge technique inside opponent’s 25 yards, reverse flick, etc.

But what is it that Sanwar has to precisely do remains a question mark for him. He tends to rely on his fate now, “Only our performance is in our hands, what else we can do?”

Sanwar is an ordinary person with not-so-ordinary hockey skills – frontline player of the Army team, with fairly impressive goal conversion rate; one who loves watching movies, listening to music; one who has enrolled for Bachelors in Arts. He has learnt new tricks, like moving the ball in air, by watching his role model, Jamie Dwyer, on television, during the World Cup 2010.
As any player, Sanwar remains eager to learn and has a daily training schedule lasting many hours on synthetic turf – a privilege that not may get – to improve and correct his mistakes.

Finally, when you walk past Sanwar, you realize that Sanwar is shy and not one of those players who will talk about themselves, and will not possibly canvass about it either. He doesn’t criticize the system either.

Sanwar has been told that there isn’t much difference between the caliber of a domestic player and a national level one. Just that, “You have to do something different to go to next level.”
Effectively, you understand we have many Sanwar Alis in our system. One tends to think, if at all, this Sanwar Ali will ever make it to the national team; if at all, someone someday will come, observe his game and tell him what precisely he has to do/not do/improve or “What is that different thing”, to make him suitable to wear that blue jersey?

And if only people who count discuss with players and tell them how good they are, which areas need improvement and at what rate…..