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SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2009
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LOUNGE RUGBY
Scrumming with the Hurricanes A Delhi rugby team braves hostility and indifference to find passion and talent in the village of Maidan Garhi
B Y B LESSY A UGUSTINE & K RISH R AGHAV ···························· t’s 7.30 on a Sunday morning, and Kuldeep Bist owes his team a round of bananas. The 43-year-old rugby coach of the Delhi Hurricanes, sporting a John Lennon hairstyle and a leg brace out of a science fiction movie, is paying the price for his own decision. “It’s my fault, really,” he laughs, watching the rest of his team practise set pieces at the Jasola Sports Complex in Sarita Vihar. “There was a lot of filthy language being spoken on the field, so I decided to fine anyone who swears during practice. Turns out, I was the biggest offender.” But while bananas can bail you out if you use swear words, Bist isn’t so easy on sloppy play. “This team tends to get too comfortable, so sometimes a bit of kick in the back is necessary,” he says. “They’re almost like an extended family.” He’s not using a figure of speech. There are six pairs of brothers in Delhi Hurricanes, all from the same village of Maidan Garhi, where rugby is now the sport du jour.
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In 2004, when Bist, a former member of the national team, decided to form the Hurricanes, finding players was his first major challenge. Scouting for talent at a few local school matches, such as the Shiksha Bharati School at Dwarka, he found that even the so-called seasoned veterans knew little to nothing about the game they were playing. “The first question he asked us,” recalls Manoj Kumar, one of the Hurricanes’ most senior players at 28, “was ‘What position do you play—Flanker or Winger?’ We were stumped. We had no idea what those terms meant.” Bist then shifted focus to getting the PHOTOGRAPHS
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MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT
Rugby 101: A typical practice session involves complex set pieces, basic drills, discussions on strategy and, if you’re lagging, lots of punishment pushups.
young, green recruits up to spec, and in that search found the village of Maidan Garhi. Located near the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou), where Bist lives and works as an administrator, Maidan Garhi is home to the Dagar clan of Jats. Bist noticed that most boys there were “heavily built and seemed to have a natural inclination towards sports.” He hung around the village looking for “catch”. He got his most important catch in 20-year-old Arun Dagar, a national-level high jumper and discus thrower. When Bist asked Arun if he would play rugby, the youth, who had only seen rugby on television, agreed to try it out. Like Bist years ago, he fell in love with the game. Arun not only went on to become the team’s captain, he was also instrumental in getting other boys from the village to play along. Friends joined in, and brought their brothers along. There are around 18,000 rugby players across the country, but the village has given this year’s national team four players. Rugby hasn’t yet found a permanent home in Maidan Garhi, however. “Nearly 40 boys from the village played rugby at one point, but a lot of them left because they thought it had no scope,” says Arun. “There’s no space to play within the village, and even the fields have too uneven a surface for proper practice,” he says. Professional rugby is a little more than a decade old in India, and fledging clubs such as the Hurricanes, which partic-
SEASON OF PLENTY
Where to catch the lions and the bulls in the near future
The men’s rugby season kicks off in July, and goes on till the end of the year. All the metros have more than one local men’s team: Delhi has three—the Hurricanes, Lions and Bulls. Mumbai has the Bombay Gymkhana, and the Mumbai Magicians. Chennai has the Cheetahs, while Kolkata has the Jungle Crows, Future Hope and Kolkata Police teams. Bangalore has the Tigers and the Rugby Football Club. „ For more information on rugby in your city, visit the Indian Rugby Football Union (Irfu) or Rugby India (www.rugbyindia.in), or subscribe to the Irfu newsletter at Everything Rugby at www.everythingrugby.com „ Irfu organizes tournaments and training camps for both men’s and women’s teams. Rugby teams in India are organized into two divisions based on rank. At the end
of each season, the most successful teams in Division 2 are promoted to Division 1, while the bottomranked teams are relegated. „ The Delhi Hurricanes, currently ranked second in Division 2, is scheduled to play at the Bhubaneswar Division 2 Callaghan Cup in October. „ This year saw nearly 40 schools participating in the annual Mumbai Irfu interschool tournament, with 250 games played over two weeks in February. „ The first All India Women’s Rugby Tournament was held in May. The Indian women’s rugby team will travel to the Asian section of the Women’s Rugby World Cup qualifier in October. Blessy Augustine
En route: The Hurricanes (coach Kuldeep Bist is in a black Tshirt) have shifted training grounds six times over the last year. Their current home in Jasola is also temporary.
ipate in inter-city tournaments, operate largely in an amateur space—where sponsors are rare. Few, if any, can support themselves full-time with just rugby, and juggle jobs, households and college with a game they love passionately. “My parents ask me what I’m going to get out of this game. I don’t have any answers to that, all I know is I love it,” Arun says. This familial objection gets louder, says 17-year-old Jagga Dagar, another player from Maidan Garhi, when you get injured. “The coach insists we all get insured, but insurance companies pay only if you have been admitted in hospital. They don’t compensate if you have a fracture or are prescribed physiotherapy,” Arun says. “The boys all want to make a
career in rugby, but are doubtful about it,” says Arun. “Their main ambition right now is to be selected and play in the national team.” All eyes are now on the 2010 Commonwealth Games where India, as host nation, qualifies automatically. Nitin Dagar, 19, who was named Best Forward at the Under-19 Bombay Gymkhana tournament in June, has convinced his parents that rugby is going to take off in a big way once the Indian team, currently ranked 83rd in the world, debuts in the games. Bist echoes the sentiment. “But I hope we don’t draw world champions New Zealand in the first match,” he says. “Then, we’ll have to plead with them to keep the score down a bit!” blessy.a@livemint.com
whelming about Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. It does its job reliably—setting up the story arc, getting you excited about the premise—but it could have aspired for more. The secondary characters in Flotsam are a bit ho-hum, and some of the dialogues are bland—something that would have dragged it down if it were a stand-alone game. But as a pilot episode, this could be the prelude to something wonderful. Fingers crossed. Lucky voodoo charms invoked. Bring it on, we say!
Islandbound: The pirate returns.
the Caribbean, in a strange little place called Flotsam Island. Controls are simple enough: Walk around using the the keyboard, click to examine or pick up objects. The inventory also allows you to combine two objects to make something new. The puzzles mostly hit the sweet spot between practicality and insanity, and one sequence involving a mad doctor and a lab monkey deserves special mention for the way it’s crafted. If you’re stuck, there’s an in-game hint system that nudges you in the right direction. The graphics are sharp and colourful. So blame it partly on the colossal expectations that the series carries with it, but you can’t shake the sense that there’s something ultimately under-
GAMING REVIEW | LAUNCH OF THE SCREAMING NARWHAL
Reboot ahoy! Monkey Island is back after a nineyear hiatus. But does the reboot put fresh wind in its sails?
B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com
···························· here’s trepidation at first. Pacing around the room. A self-deprecatory chuckle or two. Biting of nails. Then a few sighs, a flash of annoyance. A picosecond of utter horror. Denial. Maybe even furious anger. Then, a reluctant acceptance. Calm, quiet. Maybe even fun! For many gamers, the first 5 minutes of Tales of Monkey Island could well be the most gut-wrenching gaming moments this year. Consider the weight on its shoulders. The first two Monkey Island games are held on Himalayan pedestals, as glorious relics of the golden era of adventure games in the early 1990s. With their wonderful humour and bizarre plots, they’re easily one of gaming’s most beloved titles. The news of the series’ resurrection was greeted with equal parts joy and outrage, and the angry eye of the Internet was focused
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sharply on Telltale Games, at the helm of this reboot: Five episodes, one a month, each lasting around 4-5 hours. Not unlike a TV miniseries. So, first, the good news: The first chapter of Tales of Monkey Island, called Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, is a fun, sharply written game that is highly recommended. It manages to capture the spirit of the original and the voice-acting and music are all spot-on. The bad? It doesn’t seem to aspire to the dizzying heights set by its predecessors, and there’s a sense that in playing safe, Telltale didn’t have as much fun with the franchise as it could have. Mighty Pirate Guybrush Threepwood (“capital M, capital P”) returns to thwart Evil Pirate LeChuck’s plans of voodoopowered world domination. Things, of course, go a bit awry. There’s a mysterious curse in the air, and Guybrush finds himself separated from his wife Elaine, stuck somewhere in
Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is available as a digital download at www. telltalegames.com/ monkeyisland. Currently, all five episodes can be ordered for $34.95 (around Rs1,750).