Eat a lot of chocolates

The Pro kabaddi league is off to a great start. I happen to be in the middle of the entire drama as one of the teams is owned by Uday Kotak in a personal capacity. Like always I love being exposed to a variety of experiences and being involved in a sports team is definitely amongst the most interesting experiences of a lifetime.

The first thing was naming the team, then some designs and some posters… I have blogged about being involved in the making of the song and video… here is the final video

Man it was amazing fun!

The matches have started well in earnest. But I see quite a few issues that need to be ironed out. At the start itself I had told the team to focus on diet and nutrition along with training as a core requirement. Budget constraints pushed it out of the reckoning. I had my chance again when we lost two close opening matches. I saw what the team was having. They were having energy drinks and protein drinks at no predefined intervals. No plan no thinking only drinking. This made no sense to me. Thanks to Jispa and her sport I am aware of a few things. You need carbs before the matches and you need protein after to recover. Simple basics and you have to be hydrated with electrolytes and not with high sugar energy drinks. Sugar is a killer. And where the F are the bananas in the entire picture? The team was without any such food. Hence I got the ear of a senior guy and I directly rammed it in. This team is eating all wrong. They are getting wrong nutrition and wrong training.

I see being a team owner as a kind of responsibility. A responsibility to all the players that you have bought for your team. They need to be taken care of. Especially in kabaddi when the players are from the hinterland and are not really well off or are not really exposed to the scientific training mindset. These guys are players whom we need to groom and prepare for the long run. They will go back to their teams and they have to tell everyone and spread the word what they have learnt. So now thanks to Jispa I could push my point across and thanks to that we have got a budget sanctioned for a trainer and a masseur for the kabaddi team.

Then I remember the experience I had with the cricket team and then the interaction I had with Anil Kumble once and how he spoke about enjoying practice and I found that a big thing. Even Tendulkar and Dravid can get bored doing the same net practice every day. That’s right. You may be the best in the world but you can still be bored at doing the same thing every day. The idea is to have fun and do a wide variety of things that can get you to be the best at what you are. Its fun and a challenge.

The point being that life is a collection of experiences. You build on what you experience. On what you learn from anywhere. I never knew that Jispa’s swimming and an event with Anil Kumble along with my cricket playing would help me help a Kabaddi team and then who knows where this experience will take me. I am reminded of the movie Forrest Gump and eth famous dialogue of life being like a box of chocolates. Here look at this scene… its lovely and extremely philosophical.

Life is like a box of chocolates. Only thing is that you have learn from every chocolate you eat!

here.. one more bonus video!