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Mumbai Girls On Which Part Of A Guy Attracts Them by umar-akmal Harmanpreet Kaur has a story quite unlike a lot of other female sports stars in the country. It wasn't tough convincing her folks when she decided to turn professional. That her family was obsessed with the game helped. Her performances on the field did the rest. "I was always very determined that I have to represent India. I don't remember even thinking about another career option apart from cricket." It was her father's passion for the game that rubbed off on her too. A club cricketer himself, Harmandar Singh Bhullar chopped off and customised one of his own bats - oversized for his pre-teen girl - for her routine 4 pm cricket sessions with the friends. The eldest amongst her three siblings, Harmanpreet is the apple of her father's eyes. So much so that the parents took some serious flak from her school teacher, who lived a stone's throw away, for letting a girl venture into the male-dominant game instead of encouraging her to take her studies more seriously. They did try though, like any other concerned parent in India would, by threatening to put a cap on her evening cricket routine, but did not bat an eyelid when the offer to pursue a career in the sport came through. Kamaldish Singh Sodhi, who owned Moga's premier cricket academy, was on his usual talent-scouting trip to one of the local cricket maidans in Punjab. When Sodhi spotted a skinny,teenagegirl taking on the challenge from boys in gully cricket - and acing it - the decision to build a girls' team fromscratch was almost instant. Little did he know he was planting the seed for one of India's most celebrated women cricketers. It wasn't all that easy for him though, reveals Harmanpreet. For a girl who took keen interest in cricket, it was frustrating to even comprehend why people would offer her suggestions to pick some other sport instead. She had been told, time and over again, that there existed no facility for the girls in her town to learn cricket. "Hockey, athletics, volleyball, basketball - everyone gave me the option they thought would suit me best. And that annoyed me. I just wanted to play cricket but nobody understood that." Quite naturally, when Sodhi approached the carefree teenager, her instinctive response was to stall the chat with the man she had seen around, observing her game. As it turned out, Sodhi not only encouraged her to embrace the passion she had for the game, but also laid the platform for her take it up a notch by admitting her in the school absolutely free of cost. "Sodhi sir took care of my tuition fees, commute, cricket academy fees, shoes, cricket kit and every thing else that you can think of." Sodhi though had to convince the apprehensive father who was worried for her daughter sustaining injuries with leather ball cricket. But once he did, and it did not take him long, the Bhullar family had decided to shift their daughter to SK Public School in Ferozepur - 27 kms away from their residence. All of 16, Harmanpreet was flustered to find out that the three-month break after the tenth board examinations was coming to a premature end. The annual session had already begun in her new school and she almost gave up on Sodhi's offer. "My father lured me into it. He said, 'don't think of it as a school, after all, all you have to do is play cricket throughout', and I was convinced." Starting off from an unrecognised school team, Harmanpreet gained an entry into the Punjab Cricket Association camps on the back of consistent all-round performances for the Ferozpur district team. In under two years of her professional training, she was knocking on the doors of Punjab's senior team. As luck would have it, a well-balanced squad meant there were no vacancies and the 18-year-old was left with little choice than to continue for the U19 team for another year. On becoming zonal champions - after beating heavyweights like Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana - she broke into the North Zone team. The performance continued in the U19 Challenger Trophy and even before she knew it, Harmanpreet was training at the NCA facility in Bangalore with 29 other probables for a spot in India's senior squad for the 2009 Women's World Twenty20. The camp in Bangalore was an eye-opener though, Harmanpreet feels. "That was the first time I came to know about fitness and gym sessions. We were doing none of it back home." Gaining experience from her training stint with some of the finest in the country, Harmanpreet went back to Moga, not sure if she had it in her to make it to the senior team. In the era when online scorecard culture was yet to catch up with the less popular women's cricket, Harmanpreet was checking on her friend Poonam Raut about the latter's domestic games when she learnt about her national call-up. "I was shocked. She told me that the team had been announced a week ago but I hadn't received any such notification from the BCCI." Perplexed, Harmanpreet asked her Sodhi sir to confirm if there was any truth in what she was hearing. An elated coach rang the selectors but it was only two day's later that the eagerly-awaited confirmation call came. "I was expected to join the squad in Mumbai in two days' time for another camp before we left for the World Cup. Guess it was pure luck that I happened to call Poonam, or else I would have missed the bus."
Friday, 11 March 2016
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