The Hindu : Sport : Pulsating encounter on the cards

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Friday, Aug 10, 2007
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Sport

Sport

Pulsating encounter on the cards

S. Thyagarajan

VOLLEYBALL / India comes to grips with Pakistan

— Photo: S. Thanthoni

LOOKING AHEAD: Indian volleyball coach G.E. Sridharan and his Pakistan counterpart Stefan G. Dimitrov on the eve of the Test match in Chennai on Thursday.

Chennai: It will be difficult to decipher how many of this generation are alive to the fact that India was once in the top echelon of Asian volleyball.

The bronze in the 1958 Asiad in Tokyo and a silver in the next at Jakarta underlined the country’s stature as one to be counted. The star status enjoyed by the spectacular spiker ‘Panther’ Palanichamy, so named for the ferocity of his attack, is etched in the minds of those fortunate to witness the player in action. Another Asian Games bronze came at Seoul in 1986 when the influential Jimmy George was in full flight.

Troubled times

Memories such as these come in a cascade as India comes to grips with Pakistan in the third Test on Friday. Those halcyon days are truly behind us now. The new era, which has catapulted Japan, Korea and China to the edge of superpower status, has left India stranded in a midcourse of doubt, despair and desperation.

Not all the dynamic restructuring, under the stewardship of B. Sivanthi Adityan and his all-endeavouring team, has been able to elevate the rating. True, there have been phases when a sparkle has rekindled the belief that not everything has been squandered.

The legacy of Palanichamy was lapped up by the likes of Balwant Singh (Ballu) and an array of stars headed by the mercurial Jimmy Goerge and Cyril Vellor, Shyam Sundar, Ramana Rao, Ravikant Reddy and the current National coach G.E. Sridharan. A few have been as good as anybody in Europe to merit an invitation to make a professional career in the Italian league.

In 2001, India missed a berth for the World Championship by a whisker - a clear 0.01 per cent in a three-way tie. The junior outfit qualified for the World Championship in 2002 and won even the Asian title next year.

The silver medal last month at Kuala Lumpur in the junior qualifier for the World Cup at Mexico was a high point as was the victory of the senior squad in the Central Asian Championship in Pakistan. The latest booster came in the form of a silver medal at the Commonwealth Championship in Kolkata last week.

The teams, which shared the honours in four-Test series across the border, resume here after a victory each in the two Tests played at Visakhapatnam earlier this week.

The one point that the two coaches, Stefan G. Dimitrov and Sridharan agreed was that the series and the frequency of it contributed immensely to the progress of both countries in the continent.

The Pakistani coach, a Bulgarian who is in-charge of the squad for the last five months, observed that the competitions were basically the training schedules in the preparations for the forthcoming Asian Championship. Dimitrov acknowledged the superiority of India describing the squad as very strong, but asserted that his squad would eave no stone unturned to keep up the tempo noticed so far.

Sridharan was happy at the way the Indian team had shaped so far but conceded the existence of a few grey areas like the poor blocking system as factors for the defeat in the second Test at Vizag. He added that all the players were fit and raring to go on Friday.

International Ramana Rao, who is co-ordinating the tours, pinpointed the tremendous response at Vizag for the Test and looked forward to witnessing a pulsating tie on Friday. Doordarshan will telecast the Test live on its sports channel.

The teams: India: P.S. Srikant (captain), Guruchand Singh, Vibin M. George, K.P. Shaheem, Sanjay Kumar, Jitendra Singh, Kapil Dev, Darshan Singh, G. Pradeep, Sube Singh, Selton Moses, Sivarajan (libero). ,