What are your favorite sports to watch and play?
I’m a gymnast. I’m a gymnast from India. I’m a rhythmic gymnast from India. I used to practice 25 years ago. When I started with gymnastics, the sport was relatively unknown. I used to practice well before Nadia Commenici became a household name. When the movie released, I had moved from being an Artisitc gymnast to Rhythmic gymnast. The effort was humongous. The equipment minimal. Teachers non-existent. My coach, the person that trained me in flexibility used wooden yoga bricks to help me go beyond the 180 split expected in Artisitc gymnastics. He stood on my hips to over extend in the split. I spent more than a mere few years doing this without any idea of or worry about hip displacement or any regular injuries associated with gymnastics. I learnt about scoring and marking schemes only after a few competitions. My first national championship had no participants. I was the only participant. So I don’t even know if that made me a national champion! But all this self learning, made me good at identifying mistakes made by other gymnasts in competitions. So, my first preferred sport to watch is gymnastics.
The years of rigorous stretching has ruined my lower back and hips, and I have pain, but flexibility is still better than most even after almost a decade of not practising the sport. One of the exercises we practiced before gymnastics was running. This was roughly 1200 m for warmup and 1200 to 1600 m for cool-down. So athletics, became the fall to option as a sport I participated in growing up. The rules are easy to understand and penalties easy to follow.
Cricket or some abused form of street cricket and badminton – again the abused version only were the sports I played pre -gymnastics. Rules were patchy and it was more to hit the ball out of the boundary or just keep the shuttle in play for as long as possible with least effort from either players – kind of sport. I like watching the sport, but I don’t follow the rules all that much. And I definitely don’t bet on the winning 11 or the exclusive 2.
Just a little more 