Jun 22, 2006 01:23 PM
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(Updated Jun 22, 2006 03:42 PM)
Touch Play — The Prakash Padukone Story by Dev S. Sukumar; Badminton Inc; Price: Rs.300; 295 pp.
Excessive adulation bestowed upon the men in blue, i.e India’s cricket stars, explains why sportspersons who have attained the pinnacle of glory in other global sports are relatively unsung and unchronicled. Despite huge public expenditure — mainly on administration and administrators — post-independence India has produced few world champions, undisputed masters of their game, even if for a brief period. Michael Ferreira was crowned world billiards champion on several occasions. So was Bangalore-based Prakash Padukone, the world’s # 1 badminton star in the 1980s. But who remembers them? Certainly not the hagiographers who churn out cricketers’ biographies with tedious regularity.
Yet the shy, self-effacing Padukone who hoisted Indian badminton on the global map when he won the All England Badminton Championships in 1980 is one of the very few global # 1 players India has produced. That he attained the very summit of this lightning fast, quick reflexes game which requires reservoirs of stamina and supreme physical fitness, did wonders for dispelling the pervasive belief that ‘lazy, unfit’ Indians can never reign supreme in one-on-one gladiatorial racquet games such as tennis, badminton, table tennis and squash. To this list add field athletics. Padukone’s major contribution to Indian sport is that he exploded this myth and did wonders for national self confidence.
Therefore former New Indian Express sports correspondent Dev S. Sukumar has rendered an overdue tribute and valuable public service by painstakingly penning Touch Play, the authorised biography of this ace shuttler, the second son of an ITI employee who self-propelled himself from the stone-slab badminton courts of Bangalore’s Canara Union to the winner’s podium in Stockholm, Copenhagen and London. In 1980 Padukone became the first badminton player ever to win the badminton Grand Slam, i.e the Swedish, the Danish and the All England titles in one year. He also won the London Masters Open the same year and in a game where shelf lives are low, was ranked among the world’s top-ten for almost a decade upto 1989. Indeed Padukone was perhaps the last player to staunch the all-conquering floodtide of Chinese and Indonesian shuttlers, who currently dominate the world’s competitive badminton arenas.
Touch Play traces Padukone’s meteoric rise from a wedding hall-cum-badminton court in suburban Bangalore to the high-pressure arenas of Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Wembley stadium. Born on June 10, 1955 he learned the rules and nuances of this fast-paced game watching his father Ramesh, a manager of the public sector ITI (Indian Telephone Industries) and founder of the Mysore State Badminton Association (MSBA). Young Padukone showed an early affinity for the feathered shuttlecock by bagging the Karnataka State Junior Championship in 1964 at age nine, while a primary student of Seshadripuram High School, Bangalore. In 1972 when he was a mere 17, he stroked his way into the national spotlight by winning both the junior and senior titles and the Arjuna award in the same year. From 1972-1979 he reigned as the all-conquering national champion.
After graduating from Bangalore University in 1975, Padukone was signed up by the public sector Union Bank of India as a probationary officer. Under UBI’s sportsmen sponsorship programme, he was sent to Copenhagen for advanced training. Padukone’s first international victory was in the 1979 Commonwealth games, where he won the gold for India. The next year 1980 was the best in his sporting career. Padukone won the London Masters Open, the Swedish Open, the Danish Open and the All England Tournament, thus achieving the grandslam.
In a society in which training and infrastructure support for players is sub-standard if not non-existent, Padukone’s race to the top of world badminton was propelled by extraordinary self-motivation. A typical day entailed rising at 5 a.m, exercise and play for three hours, followed by six successive 400 metre runs, two 30-minute skipping sessions and bench presses with 60-70 kg weights. In the afternoons, court practice would start at 3.30 p.m and continue until 8.30 pm.
This arduous regimen was unrewarded by the Delhi-based Badminton Association of India (BAI) which administers the game. Even when he was national champion, Padukone and top-level players were obliged to travel by second-class rail and accommodation at destinations was rudimentary, often on the venue floors or gurudwaras (sikh temples which provide free accommodation). According to Sukumar, “Prakash made no special requests. What was good for the team was good enough for him”.
After a successful decade (1979-88) in international badminton, Padukone contined to contribute to the development of the game. Following a brief stint as chairman of BAI during which he was prevented from improving conditions and facilities for players, in 1994 he promoted the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy (PPBA) in Bangalore, sponsored by the electronics corporate BPL. Some of the country’s best shuttlers including eight-time women’s national champion Aparna Popat, reigning men’s national champions Anup Sridhar and Deepankar Bhattacharjee among others, have been nurtured by PPBA. To date Padukone continues to head PPBA.
On the positive side Touch Play highlights Sukumar’s enthusiasm for the game which drove him to travel around the country and abroad to interview Padukone's contemporaries and rivals. However on the flipside, unlike a typical biography Touch Play does not follow a strict chronology and shuttles back and forth in time. Moreover the book conspicuously lacks a subject index, which makes it difficult to navigate this enthusiastic biography.
