MOSCOW OLYMPICS 1980: SEVEN GAMES, ONE OLYMPIC MEMORY, Part 2

Beyond the Scoreboard

The first match had ended in defeat, but the journey was only beginning.
India had stood before the Soviet Union, one of the great powers of world basketball. For a brief and memorable period, the newcomers had not looked out of place. The scoreboard had recorded a loss, but the players had crossed a historic threshold. Now came the rest of the Olympic journey.

Ajmer Singh rises

India’s next opponent was Czechoslovakia, another powerful European team. The result was difficult. Czechoslovakia defeated India 133-65. Yet the match produced one of the finest individual performances of the tournament.

Ajmer Singh scored 35 points.

For the Indian team, it was a moment of pride in a demanding contest. Ajmer had not merely contributed to India’s score. He had shown that an Indian player could stand out against some of the strongest opposition in the Olympic tournament. His performance was not forgotten.

Across seven matches, Ajmer scored 149 points and averaged 21.3 points per game. He scored 22 points against the Soviet Union, 35 against Czechoslovakia, 14 against Brazil, 25 against Poland, 15 against Senegal, 13 against Sweden and 25 against Australia.

FIBA’s statistical record credits him with 66 successful scores from 114 attempts, 17 successful free throws from 22 attempts and 38 rebounds. Statistics can preserve achievement, but they cannot fully express the responsibility carried by the Indian scorer. Every basket came against opponents accustomed to international basketball at a level India had rarely encountered.

Ajmer was not merely collecting points. He was announcing the presence of Indian basketball on the Olympic stage.

The challenge of Brazil

Brazil was India’s next opponent.

Brazil defeated India 137-64, bringing the preliminary round to a close. India then moved into the classification phase.

The results were difficult, but every game offered a new lesson. The Indian players were learning the speed, strength and discipline of international basketball. They were facing opponents whose experience had been built through years of competition at the highest level. For India, each match was also a classroom. There were lessons in ball movement, defence, positioning and decision making. There were lessons in physical endurance and in the need to remain composed when a stronger opponent began to pull away. The players were absorbing an education that no domestic competition could provide.

Learning through defeat

Poland defeated India 113-67.

Senegal followed, and India lost 81-59. Sweden then defeated India 119-63. The results were not what Indian basketball had wished for. But defeat did not mean that the journey had become meaningless.

The players were discovering what the international game demanded. They were learning how quickly an opponent could change the rhythm of a contest, how much discipline was required without the ball and how important it was to remain united when the pressure increased.

Ajmer later reflected that the team learned a great deal in Moscow, including aspects of ball movement and defense. But perhaps the most important lesson was not technical. It was confidence. The Olympic experience taught the Indian team to believe more strongly in itself. Moscow showed the players the distance they still had to travel, but it also showed them that they belonged on that road.

A test of character

There is a difference between losing and being defeated in spirit. The Indian players lost their matches, but they continued to compete. They continued to run, defend, pass and shoot. They continued to represent their country in an unfamiliar and demanding environment. Their opponents had greater experience and greater international exposure. Yet the Indian players did not surrender the dignity of the contest. Harbachan Singh remembered the sportsmanship shown by the stronger teams. Once an opponent had established a comfortable lead, the players did not seek to humiliate India. They allowed the Indian team opportunities to score and showed what Harbachan described as the true Olympic spirit.

That memory gives the story another dimension. The Olympic Games were not only about victory. They were also about dignity, fellowship and respect between athletes from different countries.

The unexpected dope test

After the opening match against the Soviet Union, Harbachan Singh was randomly selected for a dope test.

The procedure came as a surprise to the Indian camp. P. N. Sankaran accompanied him. For the players, it was another introduction to the formal world of the Olympic Games. They had come to play basketball, but they were also entering a system of rules, procedures and protocols unlike anything they had previously experienced. Such moments may not appear in an official score sheet. Yet they remain part of the memory of an Olympic journey.

The matches formed the public record. The cold, the village, the dope test, the friendships and the unexpected encounters formed the private record. Together, they made the experience complete.

The final challenge

The last match was against Australia.

Australia was a strong and experienced team, but this time India produced one of its most competitive performances. Australia eventually won 93-75, but the game remained close enough to give the Indian players genuine satisfaction.

Paramjit Singh later recalled that India had led at half time. He believed the team lost because it lacked experience of playing major international matches. That reflection contained both disappointment and pride. India had shown that it could compete. The players had discovered that the difference between the teams was not always a lack of ability. It was often a lack of exposure, experience and opportunities at the highest level.

Ajmer Singh scored 25 points. Australia’s Ian Davies scored 36, creating an individual contest that gave the match an added edge. For once, the Indian team was not simply watching a margin grow and trying to survive. It was playing basketball. It was competing.

When the final whistle came, India had lost the match. But the team had gained something important. It had shown coaches and officials from other countries that Indian basketball could stand on the same Olympic court and play its own game.

Beyond the Sidelines

The story of Moscow is incomplete without the men who stood beyond the players. Manager P. N. Sankaran brought more than administrative experience to Moscow. His long association with international basketball and tennis had given him friendships across FIBA, including with its Secretary General Borislav Stanković, who fondly called him the “Professional Tennis Player of FIBA.” In Moscow, those relationships mattered. When a representative from Adidas enquired for him - Bill Sweek, whom Sankaran knew through international circuits, it led to a complete Adidas kit for the Indian team. For a young side new to the Olympic stage, it was more than a kit. It was a moment of recognition. They had entered the Village as newcomers, and they were now being welcomed by the world basketball fraternity.

Beside him stood Coach Captain Rajan, the team’s basketball mind and its steady human presence. A yoga exponent, he understood that an Olympic debut is as much about the mind as it is about tactics. He used simple breathing exercises to release tension among the players, to calm them before they faced opponents of far greater experience and resources. An Olympic debut demands more than strategy; it demands belief and calm, and Rajan gave the team both.

Moscow Beyond the Court

Moscow was more than matches; it became a meeting place, even with Indians from outside the team, and it left behind memories that no score sheet could capture.

The first time, after all, can happen only once. It remembers the crackle of the radio in Patiala when the players first heard that India was going to Moscow. It remembers the cold of the arrival and the inadequacy of single blazers against it. It remembers the unexpected generosity of the Adidas gesture, the awe of the Olympic Village, and the surprise of a dope test. It remembers the first Indian basket on an Olympic court and ten remarkable opening minutes against the Soviet Union when the newcomers did not look out of place.

There was no victory to celebrate when India finally left Moscow. There was no medal waiting at the end of the journey, no cheering crowd at the airport. The results had been difficult, and the scoreboards had been unforgiving.

But there was something larger than victory. For seven games, Indian basketball had stood on the same court as the best in the world and had played its own game. The players had learned, endured and represented. They had returned with an education that no domestic tournament could have given them and with a dignity that no margin of defeat could take away.

History does not always remember winners alone. Sometimes it remembers those who arrived first. Indian men’s basketball reached the Olympics. It happened once. And the first time can happen only once.

Sources and Primary Testimonies

1. Personal Interview with P. N. Sankaran, Manager of the Indian basketball team at the Moscow Olympics.
2. Interview with Lt. Col. Rajan Makkolath, conducted by the author in Calicut before his death. Col. Rajan was a family friend of the author and had served as Captain Rajan, coach of the Indian basketball team at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
3. Personal notes and recollections of Harbachan Singh, member of the Indian Olympic basketball team.
4. Personal notes and recollections of Ajmer Singh, member of the Indian Olympic basketball team.
5. Official and statistical sources - FIBA historical records of the 1980 Olympic men’s basketball tournament.
6. Olympic and historical records consulted for the team roster, match results, tournament standings and player statistics.

Coming up next: SUNDAY FIELD & FLAME – 25th October 2026 - FROM ROYAL RECREATION TO ORGANISED SPORT IN COCHIN - Rama Varma XV and the emergence of a sporting culture in Cochin

MOSCOW OLYMPICS 1980: WHEN INDIA'S BASKETBALL DREAM CAME TRUE, Part 1

The Olympic journey that happened only once

Some sporting journeys are remembered for the medals they bring home. Others are remembered because they open a door that had never been opened before. When the Olympic door opened for Indian basketball in Moscow 1980, it was exactly that kind of journey.

It was the first time an Indian men’s basketball team entered the Olympic arena. It was also the only time. More than four decades later, that appearance still stands alone in the history of Indian basketball.

The final record may appear stark. Seven matches. Seven defeats. Twelfth place in a twelve team tournament. But the meaning of Moscow cannot be found in the final standings alone.

It lives in the memory of a radio announcement in Patiala, in the excitement of a journey towards an unfamiliar city, in the cold of a Moscow arrival and in the sight of Indian players standing beneath the Olympic lights for the first time.

It lives in the voices of the men who were there. It lives in the story of a team that did not return with a medal, but returned having carried Indian basketball to a stage it had never reached before.

This article has been prepared from interviews with Manager P. N. Sankaran and coach Lt. Col. Rajan Makkolath, who was Captain Rajan during the Moscow Olympics, together with personal notes and recollections shared by Harbachan Singh and Ajmer Singh. Official Olympic and FIBA records have also been consulted for dates, results and other historical details.

When the Olympic door opened

India’s road to Moscow was anything but straightforward. At the 1979 Asian Basketball Championship, India finished fifth. Under normal circumstances, that position would not have been enough to take the country to the Olympics. Japan, China, the Philippines and South Korea stood above India among Asia’s leading basketball nations. Then the world around sport changed.

Following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979, the United States called for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The boycott spread to several other countries, and the basketball tournament was among the competitions affected. Several teams that would normally have occupied places in the Olympic field withdrew.

India, which had finished fifth in Asia, suddenly found the Olympic door open.

It was not a route anyone in the Indian camp could have confidently predicted. Yet when the invitation came, the country had to decide whether it was ready to accept the moment. India did. And with that decision, a distant dream acquired a destination.

The news in Patiala

The players were at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala when the news reached them. Ajmer Singh remembered the players gathering around a radio and hearing that the Government of India had cleared the team’s participation in the Moscow Olympics. For athletes, there are moments when a dream that has lived in the imagination suddenly acquires a place, a date and a name. For these basketball players, that name was Moscow.

Ajmer had always regarded the Olympics as the highest stage an athlete could reach. He had once believed that his own Olympic dream might never come true. Now, without warning, the impossible had moved within reach.

The excitement passed through the group like a sudden current. These players, who had followed international sport through newspapers, magazines and radio reports, were now preparing to enter that distant world themselves. The radio in Patiala carried more than news that day. It carried the sound of a door opening.

The men behind the dream

The Indian team that travelled to Moscow comprised Baldev Singh, Ajmer Singh, Parvez Diniar, Dilip Gurumurthy, Harbachan Singh, Jorawar Singh, Amarnath Nagarajan, Pramdiph Singh, Paramjit Singh, Radhey Shyam, Hanuman Singh and Tarlok Singh Sandhu. Paramjit Singh was the captain. Behind them stood two men whose contributions deserve to be remembered alongside those of the players, Coach Captain Rajan Makkolath and Manager P. N. Sankaran, both from Kerala.

Every Olympic team has its visible heroes and its quieter architects. The players take the court, but their journey is shaped by people whose work begins long before the opening whistle. Captain Rajan Makkolath was the coach of the Indian team. He was a highly respected coach of the Services side and later guided India at the 1982 Asian Games and other international competitions.

For the players, however, Rajan was more than a tactician. He was the coach who stood beside them as they entered an unfamiliar Olympic world. He had to prepare them for opponents of immense strength, but also for the emotional weight of an occasion none of them had previously experienced.

P. N. Sankaran was the team manager. His international associations had already taken him into the wider world of basketball administration. His friendship with Borislav Stanković, the Secretary General of FIBA, was one of the relationships he remembered with particular warmth.

Sankaran’s recollections reveal a manager who carried not only the formal responsibilities of the team, but also a deep concern for the players and the atmosphere surrounding them. Most importantly, he remembered the affection they held for their coach. “The team was very fond of him,” Sankaran recalled of Captain Rajan. That simple observation perhaps tells us more about the coach than any list of appointments.

A national farewell

A week before departure, the Indian team met then  Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at her residence. The following day, the players met President Dr. Neelam Sanjiva Reddy at Rashtrapati Bhavan. These meetings gave the journey a national significance even before the team left India.

The Indian contingent was led by Chief of Mission Air Vice Marshal H. L. Kapoor, while shooter Raja Randhir Singh carried the national flag.

The players were no longer travelling only as individuals or as a basketball team. They were carrying the hopes of a country that was about to see one of its teams enter the Olympic arena for the first time.

Towards Moscow

From Delhi, with a stopover in Tehran, the team travelled towards Moscow. The excitement of the journey was matched by uncertainty about what awaited them at the other end. The players had trained for competition and prepared themselves for strong opponents. Yet nothing in training could fully prepare them for the scale of the Olympic experience.

As the aircraft moved towards Moscow, the dream that had begun as a radio announcement in Patiala was becoming a reality. The players were no longer waiting for the Olympics to come to them. They were on their way to the Olympics.
Cold arrival, warm welcome

Moscow greeted the Indian players with intense cold. Each player had only one Indian blazer, wholly inadequate for the freezing weather. They had arrived prepared for the Games, but not fully prepared for the climate.

According to the recollections shared for this article, the players were received at the airport by Soviet basketball legend Aleksander Belov.

Later, at the Olympic Village, the inadequacy of their winter clothing became even more apparent. One night, P. N. Sankaran led the cold and tired players to the dining hall. There they encountered an Adidas representative, Bill Sweek, whom Sankaran knew through his international basketball connections.

When the Adidas representative saw that the Indian players did not have sufficient warm clothing, he invited them to a warehouse the following morning. The team was provided with tracksuits, shoes, windcheaters and socks.

For the players, it was more than a supply of clothing. It was an unexpected gesture of welcome from the international sporting community.

They had arrived as newcomers from India. Yet someone from the wider basketball world had noticed their difficulty and reached out to them.

Life in the Olympic Village

The team stayed in double occupancy rooms. Harbachan Singh shared a room with D. P. Irani.

Around them were athletes from nations across the world, all brought together in the Olympic Village. The dining hall offered food from many countries. Shared tables created conversation, friendship and curiosity, even when language stood between people.

For players who had previously followed international sport through newspapers and radio, the Olympic Village itself was a revelation. It was a living map of the sporting world.

Ajmer Singh remembered being impressed by the cleanliness and discipline of Moscow. He recalled roads being washed at night with powerful jets of water. These may seem like small memories beside an Olympic basketball match. Yet such details often remain with athletes long after the scores have faded. For the Indian players, Moscow was not simply a basketball tournament. It was an encounter with another sporting world.

The court was waiting

Soon, the sightseeing and wonder gave way to the real purpose of the journey. The basketball court was waiting. India played the opening match of the Olympic basketball competition against the host nation, the Soviet Union. It was an imposing beginning for a team making its Olympic debut.

The Soviet Union was one of the great powers of international basketball. Its coach, Alexander Gomelsky, was a celebrated figure in the game. Around him was a team accustomed to playing on the largest international stages.

For India, the contrast could hardly have been greater. One team was a world basketball power. The other was entering the Olympic basketball tournament for the first time. Yet something in the Indian camp could not be measured by rankings or previous titles.

They were there.
They had made it.
And for a brief period, they were not overawed.

Ten minutes of possibility

P. N. Sankaran’s recollection of the opening match remains one of the most fascinating memories of India’s Olympic campaign. Before the game, he spoke with the Soviet coach. Sankaran explained that India was playing its first Olympic match and that the Soviet Union was one of the great powers of world basketball.

According to Sankaran, for the first 10 minutes India had stood on par Orin level. He remembered the score as 18-18. For the Indian officials watching from the stands, it was a moment of extraordinary excitement. For ten minutes, India had stood level with the Soviet Union.

The official record preserves the final result, 121-65 to the Soviet Union, and records the hosts’ 60-38 half time lead. But Sankaran’s memory preserves something the final score cannot show, a brief glimpse of possibility. For ten minutes, the newcomers had not looked like strangers. They looked like participants. A newspaper published in Moscow during the Games captured the movement of the Indian team in a memorable line:

“One Singh to another Singh and the third Singh takes the shot.”

It was a light hearted description of an Indian side whose players’ names seemed to echo across the court. But it also captured something larger.

Indian basketball had entered the Olympic arena and had given the Moscow crowd a glimpse of its own character.

India’s first Olympic basket

Hanuman Singh carried another special memory from that historic game. He scored India’s first basket in its first Olympic basketball match.

Somewhere in Moscow, the scoreboard changed by two points. For the match, it was only the beginning of India’s total. For Indian basketball, it was an event that could never be repeated. There would never be another first. As the game progressed, the Soviet Union imposed its strength on the contest. The final score was 121-65, with the hosts leading 60-38 at half time. India had lost its opening match.

But it had crossed the most important threshold. Indian basketball had entered the Olympic arena.

The journey continues

The first match had ended in defeat, but the journey was only beginning.
India would next face. Czechoslovakia, another powerful European team. Ajmer Singh would produce one of the finest individual performances of the tournament.  More matches, more challenges and more memories awaited the Indian players. The scoreboard had recorded a defeat. History had recorded an arrival. The dream had not ended with the final whistle. It had only begun to reveal what it meant.

Sources and Primary Testimonies

1. Interview with P. N. Sankaran, Manager of the Indian basketball team at the Moscow Olympics.
2. Interview with Lt. Col. Rajan Makkolath, conducted by the author in Calicut before his death. Col. Rajan was a family friend of the author and had served as Captain Rajan, coach of the Indian basketball team at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
3. Personal notes and recollections of Harbachan Singh, member of the Indian Olympic basketball team.
4. Personal notes and recollections of Ajmer Singh, member of the Indian Olympic basketball team.
5. Official and statistical sources - FIBA historical records of the 1980 Olympic men’s basketball tournament.
6. Olympic and historical records consulted for the team roster, match results, tournament standings and player statistics.

Coming up next: SUNDAY FIELD & FLAME – 18th October 2026 - MOSCOW OLYMPICS 1980: SEVEN GAMES, ONE OLYMPIC MEMORY - Part 2

Football: A Game That Unites the World

The conceptual and practical purity of football as a game that unites people from all races, cultures, and backgrounds makes it one of the world's most enduring cultural expressions. In its professional form, at the highest level, it provides a spectacle to rival anything else of comparable standing.

Did you know that hundreds of millions of people worldwide play football? It is played absolutely everywhere. FIFA has 211 member associations, divided into six regional confederations: CAF (Africa), AFC (Asia), UEFA (Europe), CONCACAF (North and Central America and the Caribbean), OFC (Oceania), and CONMEBOL (South America). That is more than the number of independent countries in the world, since some regions and territories field their own national teams. But the spirit holds: nearly every corner of the globe gets a shot at qualifying for the FIFA World Cup, and few things unite a country quite like a qualification run.

FIFA estimates that over 300 million people play organized football. Billions more play casually. That is the boy in Kozhikode Vellayil with a plastic ball, the girls on a school ground in Kannur after 4 pm, the old men at Kottappadi ground in Malappuram who still argue about the 2022 Manjeri Santosh Trophy as if it were yesterday. In Kerala, we do not count in millions. We count in maidans. Every open space becomes Brazil versus Argentina the moment school ends.

No other sport can say that.

Purity in Simplicity

To play football, you need three things: the ability to kick a ball, a ball to kick, and an empty space. That is why it travelled faster and farther than any other modern sport. Football has moved far beyond the country where its modern laws were first written. It has crossed oceans and continents, entered schools and universities, travelled with soldiers, sailors, workers, and students, and eventually found a home in societies with traditions and cultures very different from those of nineteenth century Britain.

Within India, few regions embraced football with the emotional intensity of Kerala. No boots. No nets. Just the dream that one day a scout would see you and you would get a call to play in Super League Kerala. The simplicity was the point. It democratized greatness. Yet from this simplicity has grown one of the greatest sporting cultures the world has known.

Wherever it went, people gave the game something of their own character. In South America, it acquired traditions of individual skill and improvisation. In Europe, different football cultures developed around technique, tactics, physical strength, and organisation. In Africa and Asia, the game became woven into local sporting life. Everywhere, the same basic Laws created space for different expressions of the game.

The football field became a meeting place.

A player did not need to speak the language of an opponent to understand a pass. A goalkeeper's save required no translation. A perfectly struck free kick could be admired by people who knew nothing about one another.
A goal was understood everywhere.

That is the extraordinary language of football.

Football became a game of schools, colleges, clubs, factories, government institutions, neighbourhoods, and villages. The game travelled from one generation to another. Boys who watched older players became players themselves. Players became coaches, referees, and administrators. Spectators became club workers. The football ground became part of community life.

Football in Divided Times

We live in an age of walls. Nations argue. Communities harden. Phones make us lonelier together. And yet, for 90 minutes, none of that matters.

In 2005, Didier Drogba went on national television after a match and begged two sides of a civil war in Ivory Coast to lay down their arms. They listened. A game did what diplomacy could not.

FIFA stamps "No to Racism" on every board, every tunnel, every major and minor event. It is not perfect. But the intention matters: a global body declaring that the game belongs to everyone.

Look closer to home. Sevens football fills entire evenings. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, all on the same bench, shouting for the same jersey. For those 60 minutes, we are not from different places. We are from the same stand. That is football's quiet politics. It does not preach unity. It practices it.

The Religion of Fandom

The relationship between football and its spectators is particularly strong. Supporters do not always behave like passive observers. They sing. They argue. They celebrate. They criticise. They travel. They remember.

A football match thus becomes a community event.

The continuing attraction of the game was visible in Kerala when the inaugural Super League Kerala final was played in Kozhikode in 2024. Calicut FC defeated Forca Kochi 2-1, with an attendance of 35,672 recorded for the final. An estimated 4,53,000 people attended SLK matches across four venues in the inaugural season, surpassing even Kerala Blasters ISL home crowds.

The significance lies not simply in the number of spectators, but in what such a crowd represents. A game that can bring tens of thousands of people together around a local team has become part of the emotional geography of the place. And that is perhaps where the larger story of football returns to its beginning.

Soccer fans live the game like a creed. Once you choose a team, you do not un-choose it. You inherit it, and you pass it on.

A father in Manchester hands down a United jersey. A grandfather in Kolkata tells his grandson about East Bengal versus Mohun Bagan. On World Cup nights, the city goes quiet. Even the buses slow down. People gather around one TV and become one crowd.

That loyalty is irrational and beautiful. It is not about winning. It is about belonging.

Rhythm, Dance, and Art

Football is beautiful because it moves like dance. It has rhythm, coordination, balance, and, at the same time, ruthless skill.

The game rewards creativity within structure. A midfielder must think three passes ahead. A striker must know where the ball will be, not where it is. A goalkeeper must become both a wall and an artist. And unlike many sports, everyone gets a moment. A defender can score from a corner. A goalkeeper can win it in the last minute. Even a throw-in can become a goal. The spotlight rotates. That is why we watch. Because on any given night, an unknown name can become eternal.

Epic Stories from Humble Beginnings

Every sport has its great stories. Football has hundreds, and most of them begin in poverty.

Pele sold peanuts on the streets of Bauru before he sold the world on the idea of "the beautiful game." Sunil Chhetri came from an army background and became India's all time top scorer. Malayalees know this story too. I.M. Vijayan was born poor, sold newspapers as a child, and rose to win the Arjuna Award and lead the national team. Kerala's football ambassador T. Abdul Rahman, an Olympian footballer from Kozhikode, started on the grounds of the Court Maidan and Railway Institute, from four stones to the national jersey. These are not exceptions. They are the rule. Football is one of the few ladders left that still reaches from the street to the stadium.

And now the girls who once played on school grounds after 4 pm are joining academies, youth leagues, and the emerging women's football scene across Kerala. The Indian women's team, led by players like Ashalata Devi and Dalima Chhibber, has inspired a new generation. Kerala's own Anju Pappachan and others are carving their names in history, proving that the ladder reaches for everyone.

Why It Stays Ahead

For an abundance of reasons, football remains ahead of other sports. It is cheap to start and expensive to master. It is simple to understand and impossible to fully solve. The twentieth century professionalized it. Better coaching, sports science, nutrition, and the standardization of pitch dimensions turned it into a laboratory. Countries that built clubs, academies, and school leagues created pipelines. Success stopped being about geography and started being about systems.
And yet, the soul did not change. Greece could win Euro 2004. Leicester City could win the Premier League in 2016. A team with no money could beat a team with everything. That possibility keeps eight billion people watching.

Social Cohesion in an Atomised Age

Sociologists call our time "atomised." We live alone, scroll alone, eat alone. Football is one of the last things that forces us into a room together. "To be a footballer means being a privileged interpreter of the feelings and dreams of thousands of people." That line is true because 22 people on a field carry the hopes of neighbourhoods.

In Kerala, in earlier days, Premier Tyres and later Kerala Blasters turned an entire state into a yellow wall. Gokulam Kerala FC and now Calicut FC make Kozhikode believe again. Clubs do not just play matches. They stitch districts together. A boy from Kannur cheers for a boy from Thiruvananthapuram because the crest is the same.
That is cohesion. Not a slogan. A habit.

Beyond the Trophy

On the Mananchira Maidan. On the grounds of the Court maidan where Abdul Rahman once ran. In the backwaters where kids kick a ball between boats. In the slums of Rio and the suburbs of Berlin. Trophies tarnish. Stadiums empty. But the game remains.

The paradox of football is that it is both tiny and infinite. Tiny: 22 players, one ball, 90 minutes. Infinite: eight billion people finding, in that small rectangle of grass, a common language.

It does not ask your caste. It does not ask for your passport. It only asks if you can run, if you can pass, if you can believe for 90 minutes that something bigger than you is possible.

That is why we love it. That is why it endures.

The question is no longer whether football can unite us. It is whether we will let it.
22 Players. One Ball. Eight Billion People. One Game. A Sport That Unites the World.

References

1. FIFA. Member Associations.
2. FIFA. Big Count 2006: 270 Million People Active in Football.
3. The All India Football Federation
4. The New York Times. Didier Drogba and His Dressing Room Intervention in Ivory Coast's Civil War. January 9, 2026.
5. Olympics. com

Coming up next: SUNDAY FIELD & FLAME – 11th October 2026 MOSCOW OLYMPICS 1980: WHEN INDIA'S BASKETBALL DREAM CAME TRUE - Part 1

THE HISTORY OF THE BANANA KICK IN FOOTBALL

How Footballers Learned to Make the Ball Bend

There was a time when football entered our lives through the printed word. Their stories reached  us through newspapers and magazines. Pele, Garrincha, Didi, Puskas, Bobby Charlton and many others were familiar names long before we had the opportunity to see them play. Their exploits reached us through match reports, photographs and stories carried across continents. We could imagine the goals, the dribbles and the great matches, but the players themselves remained distant figures, almost like characters in a story. Then television changed everything.

Football entered our living rooms, and for football lovers in Kerala it was almost like opening a window to another world. Brazil, Argentina, England, Germany, Italy, France and the other great football nations were no longer simply names in newspapers. Their players became moving figures on our television screens. We could watch their dribbles, their passes, their goals and, perhaps most fascinating of all, their free kicks.

We watched a player stand several yards away from a stationary ball while a wall of defenders formed between him and the goal. The goalkeeper took his position, waiting for the expected shot. Then came the measured run-up and the strike.

The ball would rise, apparently travelling away from its intended target, and then something extraordinary seemed to happen. As it moved through the air, it would begin to bend, sweeping around or over the defensive wall before turning towards the goal. What had appeared to be a straightforward kick became a graceful curve through the air.

For a generation of football lovers, it was one of the game's most beautiful pieces of magic.

We called it the banana kick.

But the banana kick was not born in the age of television. By the time television brought its magic into our homes, footballers had already been experimenting with the art of making the ball bend for generations. What television did was give that art a worldwide audience.

The story of how footballers learned to manipulate the flight of the ball is almost as fascinating as the kicks themselves.

The Art of Making the Ball Bend

At its simplest, a banana kick is a curved football shot, most often associated with a free kick. Instead of travelling in a straight line, the ball follows a pronounced arc through the air, allowing a player to send it around or over a defensive wall and towards the goal.

It may look simple when performed perfectly. Footballers gradually discovered that the behaviour of a football could be changed by the way it was struck. The point of contact, the movement of the foot, the speed of the kick and, above all, the rotation imparted to the ball could influence its flight.

There was no single moment when somebody invented the banana kick. It evolved through experimentation, observation and imitation. Players tried different ways of striking the ball and learned, often through repeated practice, that a football did not always have to travel where its initial direction seemed to suggest. Some players became particularly gifted at exploiting this behaviour. Among the early celebrated masters of unusual free kick techniques was a Brazilian whose name would become closely associated with one of the game's most distinctive dead-ball techniques.

Didi and the Folha Seca

Brazil's relationship with imaginative free kick taking goes deep into its football culture. One of its earliest celebrated exponents was Didi, the elegant midfielder who helped Brazil win the 1958 and 1962 World Cups.

Didi became famous for a distinctive free kick technique known as the folha seca, or “dry leaf”. The name itself captured the imagination. A dry leaf caught in the air can float, drift and suddenly fall, responding to movements in the air that are not always visible to the eye. Didi's free kick could create a similarly deceptive impression. The ball could travel with an apparently controlled trajectory before suddenly changing its movement and dropping towards the goal.

Didi's importance lies not only in the goals he scored but also in what he represented. He belonged to a generation of Brazilian footballers who treated the ball as something that could be manipulated through touch, technique and imagination. The football was not simply an object to be kicked towards a target. Its flight could be shaped.

That Brazilian tradition of imaginative free kick taking would continue through succeeding generations. Techniques were refined, new variations appeared and the art of the dead ball became increasingly sophisticated.

Then television brought the great practitioners of that art into homes around the world. For football loving youngsters in Kerala, the television screen became an informal classroom. We could watch the approach of a player, the position of his supporting foot, the movement of his kicking leg and, most importantly, the extraordinary journey of the ball after it left his foot.

We watched the masters, admired them and tried to imitate them on our own playing fields.

Among all the free kicks that entered football's visual memory, however, one would eventually stand apart.

Roberto Carlos and the Ball That Seemed Impossible

It was 3rd June 1997. Brazil were playing France in the Tournoi de France at Lyon, and Brazil had been awarded a free kick roughly 35 metres from the French goal.
Standing over the ball was Roberto Carlos. The Brazilian left-back took his familiar approach and struck the ball with his powerful left foot. At first, the trajectory seemed completely wrong. The ball travelled towards the right, apparently moving away from the goal. Then, as it continued through the air, it began to curve back towards the target.

It swept around the defensive wall and passed inside the post, beyond the reach of goalkeeper Fabien Barthez. For those watching, it seemed almost impossible.
The goal quickly became one of the most famous free kicks in football history. Its extraordinary trajectory attracted attention not only from football followers but also from scientists. Years later, French physicists studied the kick, seeking to understand how a ball could travel on such an apparently improbable path.

For the football world, it was a spectacular goal. For scientists, it was a fascinating problem. How could a ball that appeared to be travelling away from the goal suddenly curve back towards it?

The explanation lay not in magic but in the interaction between a spinning football and the air around it. The physics was there all along, although most spectators needed no explanation. We simply watched the ball bend and marvelled.

Roberto Carlos had shown the world just how dramatic that bending movement could become. Five years later, another Brazilian would produce a free kick that demonstrated a different way in which the flight of a football could deceive the eye.

Ronaldinho and the Ball That Kept Rising

At the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, Brazil faced England in the quarter-final at Shizuoka.

Ronaldinho stood over a free kick more than 35 yards from goal and towards the right side of the field. England goalkeeper David Seaman was positioned away from his line.

Ronaldinho struck the ball.

It rose high into the air, travelled over the English goalkeeper and dropped into the top corner. For a moment, it was difficult to know exactly what Ronaldinho had intended. Had he attempted a shot or was he trying to cross the ball?

The uncertainty became part of the story. England's players believed he had intended to cross the ball, while Ronaldinho maintained that he had been trying to shoot. He later acknowledged that the ball had travelled farther and swerved more than he had expected.

Whatever the original intention, the goal became unforgettable.

It demonstrated something important about the relationship between a footballer and the ball. A player can determine the manner in which he strikes it, but once the ball leaves his foot, its journey is shaped by forces beyond his direct control. Football has entered a different world, where speed, spin, gravity and the surrounding air begin to determine what happens next.

The great free kick taker learns to anticipate that journey. The greatest seem to make it look effortless.

Beckham and the Age of Precision

By the beginning of the new millennium, the curling free kick had become one of football's most admired skills. Few players made it more recognisable than David Beckham. If Roberto Carlos was associated with extraordinary power, Beckham became renowned for precision. His free kicks often seemed to follow an invisible path chosen before the ball was struck. Over or around the defensive wall, towards a particular part of the goal, the ball would rise, bend and descend with remarkable accuracy.

His technique became familiar to millions of viewers: the measured approach, the carefully planted foot and the distinctive swing of the right leg. The result was often a ball that seemed to obey an instruction written into the kick itself.

One of the defining moments came against Greece in 2001, when Beckham's stoppage time free kick secured England's qualification for the 2002 World Cup. Another memorable example came against Ecuador at the 2006 World Cup.
By then, “bend it like Beckham” had entered popular culture.

The banana kick had moved beyond the football field and into everyday language. Yet football's experimentation with the flight of the ball was about to take another turn.

When the Ball Refused to Behave

The traditional curling free kick depends heavily on spin. But another Brazilian, Juninho Pernambucano, became famous for a different kind of dead ball technique. During his remarkable spell with Lyon, Juninho became one of the most feared free kick specialists in European football. He could produce the familiar curling shot, but he also became famous for a technique that appeared to challenge the very idea of predictable ball flight.

The knuckleball
Instead of giving the football substantial spin, the player attempts to strike it in a way that produces very little rotation. The result can be a ball that dips, swerves or changes direction unexpectedly as it travels towards the goal. One of Juninho's most celebrated examples came against Bayern Munich in the Champions League in 2003. From around 30 metres, he struck a free kick that dipped dramatically before going into the net off the inside of Oliver Kahn's left-hand post.

The traditional banana kick had a graceful, recognisable curve. Juninho's knuckleball seemed far less willing to follow a predictable path. It was another chapter in football's long experimentation with the behaviour of the ball.

And once again, television allowed millions of spectators to witness something that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined.

Messi and the Modern Generation

The art of bending a football continued into the modern era, and Lionel Messi became one of its finest practitioners.

His free kick against Liverpool in the 2019 Champions League semi-final has become part of the modern collection of great curling free kicks. From a central position outside the penalty area, Messi lifted the ball over the wall and sent it bending into the top corner, leaving goalkeeper Alisson with little chance.

The scene was familiar, even though the football world around it had changed enormously. The equipment had changed. The football itself had changed. Goalkeepers had become taller, stronger and more extensively prepared. Set piece coaching had become increasingly sophisticated, with coaches and analysts studying angles, positions and patterns in ways earlier generations could hardly have imagined.

Yet there was still room for the old art. A footballer could still stand over a stationary ball and make it bend.

From Didi to Roberto Carlos, from Ronaldinho and Beckham to Juninho and Messi, different generations developed different ways of communicating with football. Some relied on power, some on precision, some on extraordinary spin and others on almost no spin at all.

But they were all searching for essentially the same thing: a way to make the football travel somewhere the goalkeeper did not expect.

From Magic to Science

For a long time, the explanation seemed simple. It was talent, skill and, perhaps, a little magic.

But behind every bending football was something more than the eye could see. The ball was responding to the way it had been struck and to the forces acting upon it as it travelled through the air. What appeared mysterious on the television screen was, in fact, nature at work.

The great footballers did not need to know the language of physics to master it. Through countless hours of practice, they learned to make the ball do things that seemed almost impossible.

References

1. Dupeux, B., Le Goff, A., Quéré, D. and Clanet, C. “The Curve Kick of a Football.” New Journal of Physics, Vol. 12, 2010.
2. Croxford, Saul Marcus Benedict, Joel Thomas Best and Matt Jackson Duggan. “S4_4 Roberto Carlos’ ‘Impossible’ Free Kick.” Physics Special Topics, University of Leicester, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2017.
3. FIFA. “Wonder Goal or Fluke? Ronaldinho’s 2002 Strike Remembered.” 
4. UEFA. “The Best Free-Kicks in UEFA Champions League History?” UEFA.com.
5. Banana Kick,Football History,Football Skills,Free Kicks,Roberto Carlos,Football Legends,Sports Science
6. FIFA. “Brazil’s Prince and King of ’58 - Didi.” FIFA.

Coming up next: SUNDAY FIELD & FLAME – 04th October 2026 Football, A Game That Unites the World 

FROM BARRACKS TO PLAYING FIELDS

The Travancore Forces and the Military Roots of Organised Sport in Thiruvananthapuram

The story of organised sport in Thiruvananthapuram has many beginnings. Some were found in schools and colleges, others in clubs and public grounds. Yet there was another institution whose influence on the physical culture of the capital deserves to be remembered, the military establishment of Travancore.
Long before the city acquired modern stadiums, sporting associations and organised competitions, the Travancore forces had cultivated a culture in which physical fitness, drill and collective training were part of military life. It would be wrong to claim that the military created modern sport in Travancore. But it provided an important environment in which a disciplined physical culture could develop and, eventually, meet the expanding civilian sporting movement.

From Travancore Army to Nair Brigade

The roots of the Travancore military reach back to the reign of Maharaja Marthanda Varma. His victory over the Dutch at Colachel in 1741 was a defining moment in the history of the kingdom. Among the Dutch captured during the campaign was Eustachius De Lannoy, who subsequently entered Travancore service and played an important role in training and reorganising its forces along European lines.
The army continued to evolve during the following decades. The upheaval of 1809 brought a major reorganisation. Much of the existing military force was disbanded, while a remnant of the old army was retained. During the reign of Rani Gouri Parvathi Bayi, a second Nair battalion was raised and an artillery detachment was added.

The designation Nayar Brigade was adopted in 1830. The Brigade subsequently became an important component of the military establishment of Travancore. The 1898 Government Press publication The Nayar Brigade of Travancore is particularly valuable because it preserves a history of the Brigade together with extracts from official records covering the period from 1817 to 1895.

After the withdrawal of British troops from the old Cantonment, the Travancore military establishment occupied the barracks at Palayam. For many decades, the military remained an important presence in the capital.

Physical Culture Behind the Barracks

Military life naturally placed a premium on physical fitness. Drill, marching, weapons training and disciplined exercise were intended to produce soldiers capable of endurance and coordinated action.

These activities were not sports in the modern sense. Yet they cultivated habits that were compatible with organised games, regular training, physical conditioning, teamwork, discipline and competition.

The distinction matters. Football, cricket, tennis, athletics and other modern sports had their own histories in Travancore, developing through educational institutions, clubs, European residents, government employees and local enthusiasts. The military should therefore be seen as one strand in the larger growth of physical culture, rather than as the sole source of organised sport.

Pangode and a New Sporting Age

During the 1930s, Travancore's military establishment entered another important phase. In 1935, Travancore joined the Indian State Forces Scheme, and the Travancore military establishment was reorganised within the State Forces system. Pangode subsequently became the principal military centre of the capital.
The change came at a significant moment in the sporting history of Thiruvananthapuram. Travancore University had been established in 1937, and physical education was beginning to receive institutional recognition.

The University of Kerala records that its Board of Physical Education was created in 1939 - 40, with Lt. Col. Goda Varma Raja as its first President and P. I. Alexander as its secretary. From 1940, physical education activities were organised under the University's Department of Physical Education, which was initially housed in the old Military Barracks compound at Palayam.

Here, history offers a striking physical connection. A military compound associated with the world of barracks and drill became an early home for an institution devoted to the physical education of students.

The G. V. Raja Connection
At the centre of this transition stood Lt. Col. Goda Varma Raja, popularly known as G. V. Raja.

His importance to Kerala's sporting history did not arise merely from his military position. He possessed a wider vision of physical culture and understood that sport required institutions, facilities, training and organisation if it was to become part of public life.

Tennis provides one of the clearest examples. The history of the Trivandrum Tennis Club records that the idea of establishing a tennis club in the capital emerged in 1937 through G. V. Raja. The first general body meeting was held on 11 November 1937, and the club was formally inaugurated at Sasthamangalam on 1 February 1938, with G. V. Raja as its President.

He also helped bring international tennis to the capital. On 30 January 1938, American tennis star Bill Tilden and his team played an exhibition match at a specially constructed court at the Travancore University Stadium, in the presence of Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal and members of the royal family.

The University Stadium itself became an important landmark in the sporting development of the capital. According to the University of Kerala, its construction began in 1940-41 under the leadership of G. V. Raja, P. I. Alexander and P. R. Parameshwara Panicker.

The connection between military discipline and youth development became more direct with the Travancore University Labour Corps, organised in September 1939. The University of Kerala records that the Corps was formed to inculcate a sense of dignity of labour and to impart military training to young people. The Maharaja served as its Commander-in-Chief and Lt. Col. G. V. Raja as its Officer Commanding. Cadets were recruited from local colleges, and membership was recognised as a qualification for recruitment to the State Forces.

Thus, physical training and disciplined service were beginning to move beyond the barracks and into the educational world.

From Military Ground to Public Field

Football followed another path towards institutionalisation. Under the leadership of G. V. Raja, the Travancore-Cochin Football Association was formed in 1942 and affiliated to the All India Football Federation in 1946. By then, football had already developed a strong following in the region; the association provided a more organised administrative framework for the game.

G. V. Raja's achievement was therefore not the creation of sport out of nothing. It was the bringing together of several currents already flowing through Travancore, military discipline, education, organised clubs, public enthusiasm and institutional administration.

The military itself entered a new chapter after Independence. The Travancore State Forces were integrated into the Indian Army in 1951, and their successor units subsequently became part of the Madras Regiment. The old military institution of the Maharajas had thus entered the national defence structure of independent India.

But its physical legacy remained.

Pangode continues to stand as one of the enduring symbols of Thiruvananthapuram's military history. The old Cantonment, meanwhile, left an unexpected legacy when its barracks became associated with the early institutional development of university physical education.

The journey from barracks to playing fields was neither sudden nor exclusive to the military. It was a gradual passage in which different institutions and individuals played their part.

Yet the connection is unmistakable.

The parade ground taught discipline. The classroom gave physical education a place. The club gave sport a community. The association gave it organisation. And the playing field gave it a public life.

In that long journey, the Travancore forces formed one of the early links between physical discipline and organised sport, a link that deserves its place in the sporting heritage of Kerala.

References

1. Madras Government. The Nayar Brigade of Travancore. Madras: Superintendent, Government Press, 1898.
2. University of Kerala, Department of Physical Education. Department Profile / History of Physical Education.
3. Government of India. Census of India 1941. Travancore, Part I, Vol. XXV.
4. Trivandrum Tennis Club. History of Trivandrum Tennis Club.

Coming up next: SUNDAY FIELD & FLAME – 27th September 2026: THE HISTORY OF THE BANANA KICK IN FOOTBALL - How Footballers Learned to Make the Ball Bend

FROM ROYAL HALL TO SPORTING ARENA

Thoonilla Kottaram

The Story of Thoonilla Kottaram at Shanghumugham

At Shanghumugham, where the sea has silently witnessed the changing fortunes of Thiruvananthapuram, stands an old building with a history as unusual as its name. Thoonilla Kottaram, literally the “Palace Without Pillars”, was never built as a sports facility. Yet, more than a century after its early royal associations, it has become part of Kerala’s sporting infrastructure as an indoor arena.

Its journey from a royal-era building to a sporting venue reflects, in a small but fascinating way, the changing character of Kerala itself. The heritage inventory of the Government of Kerala describes Thoonilla Kottaram as a structure more than a century old, built in the colonial architectural style with laterite and mortar. Its original purpose was ceremonial. It was used for "Neettukodukkal", the conferring of honours on Europeans and others. At a later period, the building served as a museum of the Travancore Royal Family. Much later, it entered an entirely different chapter of its history when it was adapted for sport and eventually came under the Kerala State Sports Council as an indoor stadium.

The building’s early connection with the Travancore royal family provides the story’s first sporting link, although that connection is preserved largely through oral history. Sree Moolam Thirunal Rama Varma, who ruled Travancore from 1885 to 1924, was closely associated with Shanghumugham during the final years of his life. According to the late Balagopalan Thampi, a veteran badminton coach who later became closely associated with the indoor hall and whom the author interviewed, the Maharaja regularly took his morning walk in the area during the 1920s.

There is also a recollection that Sree Moolam Thirunal played tennis in the evenings. The location of the court, however, has not yet been established, and it would be premature to connect it directly with Thoonilla Kottaram. His personal interest in tennis should also be distinguished from any broader assessment of his contribution to organised sport during his reign. These aspects require further research.

The subsequent history of the building is less clearly documented. According to information available to the author, it was occupied for a period by a Travancore State Government office. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the building acquired a new and very different identity.

The person who played the crucial role in this transformation was Lieutenant Colonel G. V. Raja, one of the most influential figures in the development of organised sport in Kerala. G. V. Raja travelled abroad frequently. During one of these visits, he is said to have seen an indoor sporting facility in Europe. The experience appears to have impressed upon him the possibilities of creating a similar sporting space in Travancore. According to His Highness Chembrol Raja Raja Varma, G. V. Raja’s son-in-law, whom the author interviewed, this experience prompted Raja to renovate the old hall at Shanghumugham and adapt it for sporting use. Raja Varma could not recall the particular tour, country or year, and these details therefore remain unidentified.

This is an important detail in the history of the building. The intention was not initially to construct a modern indoor stadium in the sense in which the term is understood today. Rather, an existing structure was given a new purpose and transformed into an indoor sporting arena.

By the 1950s, the hall had become associated with shuttlecock badminton, providing something Kerala’s open sporting grounds could not: an enclosed space where players could practise and receive coaching without being at the mercy of the weather. Its emergence coincided with a period when the sport was developing a stronger competitive base in the state, turning the hall into a place where young players could learn the game and experienced ones could continue their practice. The royal connection had not entirely disappeared either.

When Balagopalan Thampi began his coaching career in 1957, his first assignment was at the indoor hall at Shanghumugham. He had undergone specialised training in shuttlecock coaching at Thiruvananthapuram and subsequently worked at the hall as a volunteer coach and coordinator.

His recollections provide a glimpse of the venue’s sporting life during those early years. Practice sessions were arranged not only for young players but also for senior men and women of the Royal Family and senior Government officials who played there. The hall thus stood at an interesting point of transition: it retained a connection with the old royal sporting world while becoming part of the emerging culture of organised coaching and competitive sport.

But the significance of Thoonilla Kottaram lies beyond the career of any one coach or player. The building represented a new idea in Kerala’s sporting landscape, the possibility of adapting an existing space to create an indoor facility at a time when such venues were scarce.

Over the years, the hall’s sporting role expanded and became more firmly institutionalised. It eventually came under the Kerala State Sports Council and developed into the Indoor Recreation Centre at Shanghumugham. By the early twenty-first century, the facility was being upgraded to meet the requirements of tournaments and sports camps. A 2011 report on the proposed renovation referred to improvements to the roof and flooring and plans to make the centre more suitable for major sporting events and training camps.

The venue later became associated with the name of G. V. Raja, commemorating the man whose vision had helped give the old building its sporting life.

Its importance was demonstrated on an even larger stage when Kerala hosted the 35th National Games in 2015. Shanghumugham became one of the venues of the national sporting festival, with the men’s and women’s beach handball competitions held at Shanghumugham Beach. The beach, which had once formed part of the landscape of the Travancore royal household, had now become a stage for athletes from across India. The contrast could hardly have been greater.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Shanghumugham was associated with the Maharaja and the world of Travancore royalty. In the decades that followed, the old hall acquired a new life through sport. Shuttlecock badminton gave it an early sporting identity; coaching and practice brought a new generation into its space; and institutional development eventually transformed it into a professional indoor sporting facility.

The story of Thoonilla Kottaram is therefore not simply the story of an old building that became a sports hall. It is a story of adaptation and continuity. A structure created for a royal world survived the disappearance of that world by finding another purpose. The ceremonial hall became an indoor court; the court became a training and competition centre; and the sporting venue eventually became part of Kerala’s modern sports infrastructure.

Its history also reminds us that sporting heritage is not always found in purpose-built stadiums. Sometimes it survives in buildings created for entirely different reasons and later given a new meaning. At Shanghumugham, a royal-era building found such a second life. Thoonilla Kottaram stands today as a physical link between the sporting world of Travancore and the organised, competitive sports culture of modern Kerala.

References

1. Government of Kerala, heritage inventory entry on Thoonilla Kottaram.
2. Interview with His Highness Chembrol Raja Raja Varma, son-in-law of Lieutenant Colonel G. V. Raja.
3. Oral recollections of the late Balagopalan Thampi, veteran shuttlecock badminton coach.
4. Official records and reports relating to the 35th National Games, Kerala, 2015.

Coming up next: SUNDAY FIELD & FLAME – 20th September 2026 : FROM BARRACKS TO PLAYING FIELDS:  The Travancore Forces and the Military Roots of Organised Sport in Thiruvananthapuram