Ankur Dhama, a member of the Indian Blind Football Team, addressing a press meet held recently in the city
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The Indian Blind Sports Association of India (IBSA) is taking the
Indian Blind Football team to the International level. This is the first
time in Indian history that a football team with visually challenged
players is participating in an international tournament.
A team of
10 visuallychallenged players along with four support staff is
representing India at the Thailand Open Football 5-A-Side (B1)
Tournament 2013 organised by Sports Association for the Blind of
Thailand that began on Monday in Bangkok.
This remarkable step by
the IBSA would not have been possible without the support of the Society
for Rehabilitation of the Visually Challenged (SRVC), a Cochin-based
NGO, which is actively engaged in the welfare of the visually challenged
people, and AirAsia.
“There is no government support. In fact,
we never expected them to act. This is purely an initiative taken by the
Blind Association with the help of the SRVC, who largely extended their
support and pioneered us in associating with AirAsia, who are now the
official sponsors of the team,” said A David, coach and manager of the
team.
The team along with the sponsors was in Chennai, before
leaving to Bangkok on Sunday. Actor Shriya Saran, who has been active in
supporting visually challenged persons, was also present to encourage
these players to do their best.
The new Chennai-based young CEO of
AirAsia India, Mittu Chandilya, who was present on the occasion, also
expressed his interest in associating with the team in future.
“We
are extremely happy to associate ourselves with this team and I am sure
we are looking forward to create many such opportunities,” he said.
According
to David, this international tour is of huge importance in the players’
career as it will give them the exposure and confidence to play
anywhere. Nearly six international teams representing Hong Kong, India,
Iran, Malaysia, Russia & Thailand are participating in the event.
Russia and Iran are the teams that are said to have had lot of
International exposure.
As per the international standards for a
B1 category tournament, each team will comprise five players, where four
players on the outfield are completely blind and a goal keeper who will
be partially blind. The support staff from each team will be standing
at each side of the goal post, guiding the players about their next
move. Apart from that, one more support staff can also be placed in the
midfield to help the players.
The design of the ball plays a
crucial role in enabling the players to know the location of the ball.
The ball resembles a football except that it is slightly smaller and
produces sound when hit.
One would expect an intensive exhaustive
training session for a game like this, but the Indian team underwent a
systematic training for just 15 days that was enough to boost the
confidence of the players.
“These players have the skill in place;
they have the ability to grasp the ball through their hearing and are
athletic enough to be physically fit. They just have to know where to
hit the ball, which is where the coach skills come into play. We are
there for them on the field. One major challenge we faced was the
communication between the players, since each is from different regions
in the country and it took them sometime to come down to a common
platform to understand each other,” said David. The players were also
equally confident like their coach and agreed that this tournament will
be an experience to all of them. “Though we trained for just two weeks,
our training was a technically sound one,” said the Delhi-based player,
Ankur Dhama, who is also an international-level athlete.
The coach
said that though winning the tournament would be like expecting too
much in very little time, he had unshakable faith in the player’s
ability to excel.
Source : The New Indian Express , 20th August 2013
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