
A ball badminton match in progress.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
An outdoor game that can set the hearts racing, test skills and agility, see lots of wrist play and challenge muscle strength is played with a small yellow ball of wool.
Swoosh! As the ball dipped right in front of the net that stood some six feet tall, the player on the front court dived to the side. The ball then swerved a good four feet to six feet from outside the court boundary line to fall just inside the line, and the players could only watch aghast. The player served the next play with the ball tossed very high into the air with his racket contacting the ball at an angle, making the ball almost disappear high up in the air and in its downward trajectory, as it fell to the ground, resembled a parabola. The tactic involved was to practise this to a degree of perfection where the ball would fall just inside the line for a “live” point. The way eagles come swooping down on their prey! A point scored.
From the description above, it can sound like a game of tennis. But then it can be a game of shuttle badminton too. What if I told you it is “ball badminton”, a team sport native to India which was played in many Bengaluru and Mysuru grounds where I grew up and enjoyed playing the game during the early 1980s. What I hear now is it is almost extinct in most cities where the outdoors have been concreted, and probably still played in a few rural areas. Do we tag this as a game on the way to extinction?
In the early 1980s, there were many round-robin tournaments among local clubs in Mysuru. It attracted and engaged local spectators for the duration of the tournament. The tournaments typically sported a festival-like atmosphere with the ground well-prepared. As in Wimbledon, three or four games will be go on in parallel and the ground watered early in the morning and boundary lines marked with white chalk powder. Believe me, there were many lines to be marked but it was all done precisely using ropes. As youngsters, we had as much fun playing as we had in preparing the ground for a day of good games.
A team sport in a five- or two-player format, it promoted collaboration and player discipline. The crowd would go into raptures as the players rallied relentlessly on end. A typical roadblock that halted the game temporarily would be the snapping racquet guts — spare racquets helped to get back into action, while the broken ones were mended by professionals with their makeshift equipment. As in any other sports, the line faults called started many a dispute, but the umpires and tournament organisers ensured that the disruptions did not kill the spirit of the game.
Evershine Ball Badminton Club was the glowing name of the club to which I owed my allegiance at Saraswathipuram in Mysuru. We had played some good games across tournaments that remains vivid in my memory to this day, almost four-plus decades later. We hit our peak form as a team when we applied for, and got selected to appear for, a tournament in Bengaluru which was a platform for State-wide team selection. Our team played well to win the hearts of the crowd in a game that we lost with respect.
Can there be a revival of this sport or is it already lost among the glamour and glitz of premier leagues of cricket, hockey, football, and kabaddi? Let’s hail the days when it brought together families and local residents for an experience called “ball badminton”.
p_harihar@hotmail.com