Monday, March 01, 2010

"Bhai Sahab, aap bahar se aaye hain kya?"

I've never watched inter-college football in my life, so the instructive few hours I spent waiting for my mum at various points last week came as an absolute revelation.

Zakir Husain College hosts an inter-college football tournament every year, one which has traditionally been dominated by the hosts themselves. It's one of those traditions that outlasts the current avatar of the college itself, with many old-timers harbouring as much of a grudge about the renaming of the tournament as they did the renaming of the old Delhi College in memory of ex-President Dr. Zakir Husain.

This year too, the sentries at the gate informed me, the home team had been in irresistible form, sweeping all before them en route to the semi-finals. You can't really do better than a hundred percent win record and zero goals conceded, can you? On the other side of the bracket, however, is where the challenge for ZHC lay, as both Kirori Mal College and Motilal Nehru College had put together teams that had been playing together and regularly at least since the beginning of the academic year. Zakir Husain (Evening) completed the semi-final lineup, though all that could be really felt for them was sympathy, since they were bracketed with the irresistible mix of unstoppable force and immovable object that is the Zakir Husain College senior team.

However, it was the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Delhi which had a huge, if indirect, influence on this year's tournament. The Ambedkar Stadium, which usually hosts the tournament (or has been hosting the tournament since the mid-1980s at least, according to the chai-wallah) was put out of commission for this year's edition, owing to (by the looks of it) fairly urgent repair work needed ahead of showtime in October. That meant that the tournament had to be played on campus at ZHC, a most unfavourable proposition for everyone except ZHC. Due to the minefield of a ground and severe space constraints, the tournament was made nine-a-side, with throw-ins and corners rendered practically useless. As was any semblance of a passing game, of course.

That brought with it its own drama as Kirori Mal College, by far the superior side for long periods in their semi-final, got done by a looping shot into their net, as Motilal Nehru College advanced to an unlikely and distinctly flattering finals place. On the other side of the bracket, ZHC breezed past ZHC (Evening) in a complete mismatch.

However, the real mismatch, as it turned out, was in the final, as ZHC played the home turf advantage to perfection with cynical fouling, referee intimidation and a brutally direct and effective long ball game in front of a blue-plastic-chair-seated audience of twelve, including me and my driver. It wasn't until the introduction in the second half of a guy with a lower lip piercing that the tricks and flicks really came out and what seemed like a difficult but definitely doable two-nil deficit turned into three-, four-, five- and, finally, six-nil. It was a little too harsh on Motilal Nehru, who played some decent stuff, especially in midfield but their single forward strategy was doomed to failure since it seemed unlikely from the get-go that containment was ever going to work against the rampant home side.

So ZHC won and, in doing so, retained a title that they haven't lost since 1934. Now there's a stat you didn't think you see at the end of this post.  

2 comments:

Ghazal said...

Sounds like a lot of fun :P

Anonymous said...

Sounds almost like Inter-class, there. :-) Nice description.

I'm not sure if there's a point to this story but I'm going to tell it again.

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I've been wilfully caught up in the self-defeating quest to get to know myself for years. I've never expected anything beneficial to result from such a quest. I tend to evoke extremely polarised reactions from people I get to know in passing. Consequently, only those people who know me inside-out would honestly claim that I'm a person who's just "alright." It's not a coincidence that the description I've laid out above has no fewer than, title included, eleven references to me (make that twelve). I'm affectionately referred to as "Ego." I think that last statement might have given away a tad too much. Welcome Aboard.

IHTRTRS ke pichle episode mein aapne dekha...

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