On my Second Inter IIT
The next year, Tattu graduated. Chutta decided to not to play due to final year commitments. I was going through some tough times. While I practiced consistently, I was forced to quit at the last moment. I couldn’t help it. The team was depleted and our morale was down. It was new with little experience.
The Inter IIT was held in Roorkee. That Inter IIT saw the budding rivalry between Bombay and Kanpur. Their group match was dramatic. Mayank Gupta from Bombay scored ten goals alone to annihilate Kanpur. We reached the semifinals but lost to Kanpur in a tightly contested match.
Every Inter IIT gives birth to new heroes. This time another, Krishna Rao, came into the limelight. Playing against Bombay for bronze, we were trailing in the last quarter. He came and he scored two goals in a row from ‘zero angle’. With two minutes to end, this lean small guy won us the Bronze. Mayank was totally helpless in front of Ishan, our central defender. Ishan (Hoby) is regarded as one of the best defenders that Inter IIT has ever seen.
It is worth mentioning that this Inter IIT saw the rise of IITM women’s swimming. Poorna Kumar, the new entrant, single handedly took her team to Bronze.
We Lose the Pool
The next year, I was given the responsibility of captaincy. Without any experience and having played just two Inter IIT matches, it was a herculean task for me to carry forward the legacy. Just as things were becoming difficult, our luck gave us another big blow. Our pool was shut down. We had to practice at a completely unknown place eight kilometres from the institute. We only got overcrowded lanes prone to accidents and collisions. Fortunately, we got the diving pool to practice waterpolo. But we had to practice shooting without any posts — the pool had no floating goalposts. It was also too small. Time had become a huge constraint — we spent more than two hours every day just to commute, effectively giving us 45 minutes for practice. We couldn’t even follow our swimming schedule. And without a coach, practice wasn’t structured.
We got another shocker the night before leaving. Prabhat, our most experienced player, had to cancel his participation, which took a toll on our confidence. Last minute cancellations had started to become a norm in our team.
Inter IIT 3.0 — The Black Chapter
We reached Kharagpur fit and confident and beat Guwahati 17-0. The next match was against Kharagpur. Their team had improved immensely under a new coach. We drew first blood, but the lack of a coach and experienced players undermined our strong position. We succumbed despite our five fast swimmers. Kharagpur effectively utilized the rules under their coach’s guidance. They depended on him so much that even shooting required his shouting. That defeat opened our eyes to how fatal it was going in without strategy — talent was not the only thing that mattered. We reached the semis, where we were up against our old foes Kanpur, whom we had not defeated in the last two years. It was a low scoring, tight match, tied at 2-2 until the last one minute.
I remember vividly those last 20 seconds when the ball was in their possession. Their central offender was struggling against Ishan throughout the match, and then he somehow rotated his arm and got the ball past him, and past the goalkeeper. Our dreams and confidence were shattered in that moment. We were out. That day I went completely blank, unable to digest the defeat. The wholehearted practice, endless hard work and effort had been fruitless. The last moment kept playing in my mind. We felt completely helpless and only somehow gathered our confidence the next day. The match for third place was against Kharagpur, who were outplayed by a brilliant Bombay in the other semis. We deployed a defensive strategy which was blown away in the last quarter. Even after a tied score of 1-1 at the end of the third quarter, we lost.
This was the first time in history that we had not finished on the podium. This Inter IIT was regarded as the black chapter in IITM aquatics history. We faced a lot of criticism after coming back to insti. We had broken our promises.
Making a Fresh Start — the Tamilnadu Senior State Waterpolo Championship
The next year, there were no promises, only hope. We started afresh. We got to know about the Tamilnadu Senior State Waterpolo championship, and decided to participate. Just before it began, we were introduced to our new coach, a former national waterpolo player from Kerala. We were the underdogs. The image of IIT was that of a team of nerds who could just about pass and shoot. The first match against an inexperienced team of national level swimmers was our toughest challenge. We were out-swum but their inexperience gave us the way. We scored three goals in the last quarter to win by 7-3.
In the semifinals, the team we played against included our coach. We cruised until the second quarter till Coach decided to play offence. Within no time, our lead was nullified, with Coach engaging in power shooting. We collected ourselves and started shooting with more confidence. Our luck and hard work blossomed at the right time — we won 9-4! The final match was not as difficult as the others. Our offenders were high on confidence. We all took our chances to shoot and won 11-1. We were on cloud nine, completely filled with happiness, confidence and pride. We were the Tamilnadu State Senior Champions!
This was just the beginning. Our new coach started an intense, rigorous training for us, concentrating mainly on our goalkeeper, Devanathan. We learnt to organize ourselves in the game and were developing very strongly — day by day, session by session. But our history has never been smooth. Every year it promises to twist and turn. All the accidents I was worried about, happened. Hoby, our defense wall, broke his thumb and we had no one but the pool to blame. It was just a week before the meet. He was out of the tournament.
