Marko Knafelc is sweating profusely. He has barely recovered his breath when he sportingly smiles and asks, “Hey, did you enjoy the show?” A few minutes ago, he and his team, the Dunking Devils, were out performing hard-to-believe acrobatic basketball stunts in the sun-soaked playground at Mogappair’s Velammal Matriculation School, even as the students cheered and clapped wildly.
It’s their first visit to India, but the five members of the acrobatic basketball team from Slovenia, are excited to be here, courtesy Golden Goose Sports. “The school kids seemed to love the show,” grins Marko.
They sure did, as they watched the perfectly-coordinated show in awe. The group was formed in 2004 and has grown in leaps and bounds, quite literally, since then. “We need to train at least three to five times a week to get this right. It’s a dangerous sport, but we try our best to make it safe.”
Marko keeps referring to it as a sport. But flying in the air and getting the ball in the right place every time hardly seems to be ‘a pleasant pastime’ — an Oxford English dictionary definition for the word ‘sport’. Acrobatic basketball, he explains, requires a lot of precise teamwork. “Every act requires us to work in unity. It helps that we are a bunch of friends who trust each other. In this sport, it doesn’t matter how you fare individually; you have to trust the guy next to you. If you don’t, it can be dangerous.”
The acts have been precarious many a time, but the Dunking Devils haven’t given up – they have, in fact, toured 38 countries with their show. “We’ve clocked 1, 200 shows,” says Marko proudly, “The biggest moment was being featured in Britain’s Got Talent ; it was confirmation that what we do is special.”
