Indian Express: Commonwealth Games 2018: Sushila Chanu and Rani Rampal, the solidarity sisters of India women’s hockey team

Mihir Vasavda

The Indian hockey team’s dressing room is an inspiring space where girls from varied backgrounds share their stick secrets, and also life lessons, while trying to emulate the famous Batch of 2002.

Rani Rampal found the story so unbelievable that she thought her team mate and friend from Manipur, Sushila Chanu, was just making things up. Chanu, on the other hand, was so aghast after hearing Rani’s tale from Shahabad in Haryana that, for a minute, she thought her skipper was pulling a fast one.

This was sometime around August 2013. The two teenagers had crisscrossed the globe and led a bunch of no-hopers to a podium finish at the junior World Cup. Despite their long association, they didn’t really know much about each other. And interestingly, it was only after their return, when reporters and cameras started reaching their homes, that the two came to know about each other’s backstory.

“I remember Sushila was giving an interview where she said how her family and neighbourhood encouraged her to play hockey,” Rani recalls. “I thought, ‘can this really happen?’,” Rani recalls. In her world, girls were only encouraged to learn housework and get married.

You’ve heard Rani’s story, perhaps — daughter of a horse-cart puller from Shahabad, challenging the khap by stepping out in shorts and skirts and playing a sport that was largely reserved for boys. Her parents were ostracised, their sanity questioned. Even her relatives were opposed to the idea.

Later that evening, Rani walked to Sushila’s room. “I asked her if what she had said in the interview was actually true,” Rani says. Sushila was puzzled at first, unsure how to respond. “But I figured out Rani was really serious, she couldn’t believe that parents and neighbours can actually encourage girls to take up sports,” Sushila adds.

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However, family support wasn’t the only reason for Sushila’s plunge into sports. The defender had seen enough women athletes emerge from Manipur to realise that a hockey stick was a passport to a better life. It was something that could land her a job, make her realise a long-cherished dream – her father, a truck driver, retiring and never taking those long risky drives on the accident-prone highway that connects Manipur and Meghalaya.

For Rani, there was a moral in the story. She too wanted to take Sushila’s path. “I was just amazed at the fact that there are parts in our country where women are encouraged to go out and work,” she says. So inspired was the Haryana girl that she decided to be the breadwinner for her family, too. “I wanted to be like Sushila and lift my family out of poverty.”

The hockey team’s dressing room is an inspiring space. It’s where girls from varied backgrounds share their stick secrets, and also life lessons. The cultural pollination results in fresh perspective and broadening of horizons. The spread of players from villages so remote that they aren’t even on Google maps makes for a vibrant changing room with fascinating idea exchange. The bonds developed off the field have played a big role in the team’s on-field cohesiveness.

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India women’s hockey team in Delhi India women’s hockey team before departure for Gold Coast.
Former women’s team coach Sjoerd Marijne, now with the men’s side, was the first to spot this camaraderie in the happy bunch of girls. His successor Harendra Singh believes the team’s unity is one of the main factors that make them favourites for a podium finish in Gold Coast. The last time an Indian women’s team achieved that was 12 years ago in Melbourne.

Women’s hockey at the Commonwealth Games has generally been a fight between four nations. Apart from India, Australia, England and New Zealand generally end up on the podium. This time, the team goes into the event with a commanding series win over South Korea. But beating the quicker and physically stronger Australian and English teams promises to be a far greater challenge than the Koreans.

Harendra, however, is confident of repeating the feat achieved by the Batch of 2002. “They understand each other’s struggles. A girl from Manipur empathises with the pressure a girl from Haryana faces while the Haryanvi girl realises the hurdles a player from the North-East has to overcome to make it to the national team,” Harendra, the coach of the 2016 men’s junior World Cup winning squad, says. “They want to win for the other person, that’s what makes them a very special team.”

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Sushila still struggles to understand why some of her teammates from Haryana did not enjoy the freedom of choosing what they wanted to do. She’d heard from Poonam Rani, a striker who, like Rani, is from Shahabad, on how she was told to stay indoors so that she would be ‘better protected from the advances made by outside men’.

Or the story of Vandana Katariya, who was forced to stop playing the sport after her father and brother were incessantly harassed by the locals for letting a girl child play. “It’s ironic, considering there are so many women from there who have won medals in major events,” Sushila says. “I come from a very different social set-up. In most languages across the North-East, the most useful things are referred to in feminine terms. I feel lucky to be born here.”

Sushila says that, in some ways, early upbringing gets reflected in a player’s style of play. “From an early age, we are given the freedom to do what we want. That’s the reason we are seen to be more creative. Maybe that reflects in our game,” she says. “I guess that’s also why players from Haryana have a strong urge to prove themselves. They have always been told you can’t do this – look at Rani, she has achieved everything a player can!”

Indeed. Rani holds the record for Indian hockey’s youngest international debut, aged 14. When she was 15, she was the youngest player to play in a women’s World Cup. She wasn’t happy just by being there – the forward scored seven goals in the quadrennial tournament in Rosario in 2010, including scoring two goals in one minute against South Africa. That year, she was included in the International Hockey Federation’s team of the year.

Unlike most players who flatter early in their careers only to deceive, Rani has only grown in stature. Captain of the team for the Gold Coast Games, they teasingly refer to her as ‘mummy’ these days. The 23-year-old has been handed the responsibility to babysit one of the younger members of the team, Lalremsiami.

Siami, as she is called, was 16 when she got the national team call-up last year. But the striker from Kolasib, a tiny village near Aizawl, could not speak or understand a word of Hindi or English. It did not take time for her to win over her teammates with her goal-scoring skills. However, she was unable to converse, or understand simple instructions on field. There were days when she’d break down and think of quitting. But in a team where every player has a story to tell, inspiration isn’t hard to find.

“Siami was made Rani’s room partner. Rani was more or less the same age when she made her debut so we thought she’ll be able to understand her emotions better,” Harendra says.

It gradually showed results. Rani would teach her basic words by talking to her in broken Hindi while the rest of the team communicated in basic sign language on field to make sure she’d get the message. Siami, on her part, read a Mizo-to-Hindi dictionary every night. “During team dinners, we told her our stories and she’d tell us hers, albeit in slow, broken Hindi. But she’d make the effort,” Rani says.

Rani, meanwhile, would find Siami’s story compelling. “She’s from a village outside Aizawl and her parents encouraged her to play,” Rani pauses. “I can’t help but think about how different it was with me – no one allowed me to play, even my relatives. It was so demoralising.”

Last year, Rani proved the naysayers wrong. From the prize money and awards she’d earned, she built a house for her parents. Rani’s been there just a couple of times – once with Sushila. “It’s incredible,” Sushila gasps, “when we spoke for the first time after the junior World Cup, she’d promised herself that she’ll be the family’s breadwinner. Now, she has proven herself.”

The usual suspects

Australia head into the tournament with a fairly new side. Still, coach Paul Gaudoin has admitted that anything less than a gold medal will be a disappointment. This will be Australia’s first big test after a disappointing run at the Olympics, where they lost in the quarterfinals.

England have never won the Commonwealth Games title. And with the quality of players they possess, there might not be a better chance for them to end the hoodoo. The Olympic champions have retained several players from the gold medal-winning squad, including captain Alex Danson.

New Xealand have named a strong squad that includes the vastly experienced duo of captain Stacey Michelsen and Anita McLaren, who will both be competing at their third successive Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast next month. The Black Sticks have kept India away from the podium in the last two editions — winning silver in Delhi and bronze in Glasgow — and will be keen for a threepeat.