It was a moment of great pride for all of Manipal when Manipal University’s Men’s Badminton Team qualified for the final rounds of the National Badminton Tournament, making them the very first sports team ever from any institute under Manipal University to ever do so! They finished 3rd in the South Zone and 8th all over India. I recently had the pleasure of meeting up with Venkatesh Kamat and Siddharth Phukan, two members of the incredibly talented winning badminton team.
Rahul : My heartiest congratulations to you guys! The first people to ever represent MU in the finals of any national level sports tournament! How does it feel?
Siddharth : Exhilarating!
Venkatesh : Yes, we’re rather happy with how far we got.
Rahul :The South Zone is the hardest zone in India to conquer in badminton, isn’t it?
Venkatesh: Undoubtedly. You’ve got VIT, SRM and all the other highly skilled teams competing in one place. It gets pretty crazy there!
Rahul: I can imagine! Who among them proved to be most challenging to play against?
(They exchange laughs and mull it over)
Venkatesh: I think the very first match we had was the most neck-to-neck competition in the entire tournament.
Siddharth: Yeah, it was a match consisting of 3 very tight sets and it was a matter of mere chance who’d win. We kind of got lucky there.
Rahul: How did you guys start out as badminton players? When did you realize you’d one day be good enough to play it at a professional level?
Venkatesh: We’re hardly professional yet. I started out 7 years ago. It was just another sport I played along with basketball and a few others. Later on, I got the opportunity to train with quite a few professionals at national and international levels at Tom’s Academy in Bangalore, and I became progressively better at it. This one time I had the opportunity to play against the then World Rank 20, Ajay Jayaram. At first, I was quite sure I’d lose horribly. But we ended up playing 3 entire sets and I managed to score a 20-17 for the match with him at the end! That was a pretty big morale booster for me. Later on, I participated in regional tournaments and eventually rose to become Karnataka’s Rank 2. That’s when I decided this was my calling.
Siddharth: I represented my school team for the first time about 8 years ago. Since then I’ve been playing at several tournaments. I slowly became at one point of time I was about to make it to the Indian National Team but due to circumstances back then, I was forced to bail before the ultimate qualifying round. But I did eventually achieve All India under 18 Rank 11, which was nice.
Rahul: Did MU support you through the whole tournament?
Venkatesh : Yes, they did…initially. We were given allowances to spend and a place to stay at and dine during the tournament. But…
Siddharth: But we were also promised quite a few things if we actually made it to the finals.
Rahul : Like what?
Venkatesh: Certain minor privileges like a year’s worth of free membership at Marena, professional badminton equipment…things like that.
Siddharth: We were also promised a party upon our arrival at Manipal once we called the sports department and informed them of our success.
Rahul: Well, did you get it?
Venkatesh: Not really. It’s like they’ve completely forgotten about us since we came back. We even called them about the Marena membership, but they keep ignoring us. I suppose being badminton players, we’ve gotten used to it. Besides I don’t think they had actually imagined we’d ever go that far. *chuckles*
Rahul: Wow. And what about the party?!
Siddharth: The party was never going to happen anyway, haha. Not with half of our team in Malaysia.
Rahul: I suppose, but you guys deserve all of that and lots more! Thanks a lot granting me the opportunity to interview people as talented as yourself. MTTN wishes you guys the very best for your forthcoming events!
The Men’s Badminton team is:
- Venkatesh Kamat(MIM)
- Siddharth Phukan(MIT)
- Eujin Choy Min Houng(MMMC, Malaysia)
- Jeevan Sembilan(MMMC,Malaysia)
- Ariffin Zab(MMMC, Malaysia)
- Ashish Krishnamoorthy(MIT)
– Rahul Basu for MTTN
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