Even as IPL blazes away, garnering TRPs and sponsorships, other sports languish in silence. Many reasons are given for this state of affairs: lack of public interest and sponsorship, media apathy and so on.
But one man, as aware as any of us about the state of most sports in this country, decided that whining alone wasn't enough. He decided to take action. Himanshu Chaturvedi, himself a sportsman (he played tennis at state level) started first in Jaipur, his hometown, and is now in Delhi to take sports coaching to the level that most sports federations are supposed to, but don't.
Chaturvedi says his decision to take up sports coaching without being part of any official sports federation came out of his experience when he wanted to take up sports full-time. He says, "I faced a lot of problems being a sportsman in my family, as I came from a family that was academically inclined. I was almost thrown out of the house when I decided to become a sportsman."
Chaturvedi decided, irrespective of parental opprobrium, to start a tennis clinic in Jaipur in 1984. He says of those early tough days, "People laughed at me." The first eight months for Chaturvedi were tough and then came his first breakthrough when Maharani Gayatri Devi School (MGD), Jaipur, invited him to hold that clinic in the school.
By 1986, Chaturvedi had 200 children in five different centres in Jaipur learning tennis. That early success made Chaturvedi even more determined to take his vision to a bigger city like Delhi.
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He says of that gamble, "When I decided to move to Delhi I did not know anyone here and I had no clue whether this would work in Delhi or not. Initially I would commute between Delhi and Jaipur, spending three days in each city every week."
So, in 1991, Chaturvedi moved to Delhi and started the grind of convincing people and appropriate authorities of his vision of coaching children in sports. By 1995, he started a coaching scheme for the DDA at the Saket DDA Sports Complex.
He also designed a tennis tournament with Rs 1 lakh in prize money, which attracted almost 600 entries. Spurred by this success and the fact that the lawn tennis association invited him to join them five years ago, Chaturvedi decided to host mini-tournaments in Delhi, as he had in Jaipur.
He says, "Everybody laughed at me, saying