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Kings of the court

Well after they have hung up their boots in top-level basketball, former Indian captains Mohd. Rizwan and Hari Krishna Prasad still keep a close watch on the changes taking place in the game they love.

ON THE basketball court Mohd. Rizwan was the general drawing up the battle plans, while Hari Krishna Prasad was in the thick of the attack. As ball handler, the former directed the campaign, while the lithe and lightly built Hari led the assault on the rival citadel. Well after the two have hung up their boots in top-level basketball, both the former Indian captains keep a close watch on the changes in the game they love.

"It's more a power game now. The taller players in our time were about 6'4", while six feet six inches is pretty commonplace now. The feeders were about five-and-a-half feet then but now even they are six-footers," says Hari. "From the two halves we played, it's four quarters now. Strategies have changed. So much more power is concentrated in the `D' now and refs allow the hustle and bustle to an extent. Board control has become vital and there is higher percentage shooting from close quarters," notes Rizwan.

In their time, camps lasted 90 days, the first phase of which was invariably devoted to physical fitness training. "We were hardly at home," recalls Hari, a native of Visakhapatnam, where he grew fond of the game watching sailors from the Philippines playing it at the Visakhapatnam Port Trust complex. Close on the heels of the camps came national tournaments, numbering about 15 a year. Such championships are far fewer now. "Unless there are competitions, how can we assess ourselves," asks Rizwan.

He dismisses the excuse of no sponsors supporting this game. There's no dearth of sponsors. It's just that the approach is lacking, he avers. There was more dedication then, a line Rizwan had heard from his own seniors. "If we lacked dedication, how did we survive 10 years at the national level and 15 in State championships," Hari asks. The courts were mostly on concrete, taking a higher toll on the body. Breaking into the national squad was tough, more so for the Asian Basketball Confederation (ABC) championships.

"We would compare our games with those of our idols and never miss watching a single game of the ABC, when we were not playing. The present crop is hooked to NBA on TV," observes Rizwan. "We didn't have many who could dunk, but we were still delivering," Rizwan remembers. "At the 1987 ABC championships, we pushed Jordan out of the pool, the latter having won bronze in the 1986 Asiad. Similarly at Beijing in 1989, India defeated formidable Saudi Arabia, coached by an American and which had got the better of South Korea.

Hari specialised in 45 degree and zero angle shooting and tried hard to follow in Rizwan's footsteps, breaking into the national squad a year or two after the latter. "The need for a foreign coach has become a must, since our own trainers are not in touch with the times," Hari feels. Increased awareness of sports medicine came rather late in the day for the dashing duo. "For instance, we came to know only towards the end of our careers that ice-packs were more effective with muscle injuries," Rizwan rues.

A month-long camp conducted by a member of the U.S.S.R. squad at Patiala in 1986 was indeed an eye-opener for the two. So did it dramatically change the way Indian coaches looked at the game, after the Russian conducted a clinic for them. Coaches must assess the load a player can take to prolong his durability. It should strictly be a horses-for-courses approach, Rizwan believes.

"During the 1985 ABC championships at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the Philippine team sucked in air from oxygen cylinders and came back on court much refreshed. For the next edition of the meet, Japan's players arrived with hand-held oxygen cylinders. The time has come for a professional league at the national level," says Hari, citing the example of Syria, which has adopted that model. Well after their heyday, these two ensured State Bank of India reigned supreme in the Hyderabad basketball scene for not less than 15 years. These battle-scarred and seasoned campaigners even now give the South Central Railway, which has international players in its ranks, a run for their money.

Honoured at the G.M.C. Balayogi Stadium, Yanam recently, the Andhra pocket of Pondicherry, the duo stepped out into the open every now and then, in a day of steady drizzle. "The rain is reducing," they said with an anxiety that the action on court would not be disrupted by the elements, and a hope that can come only from a deep-rooted love for the game.

A. JOSEPH ANTONY

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