Shuttling down memory lane

Vimal Kumar is one of the finest badminton players India has produced. A former national and French Open champion, Vimal is now a well-respected coach internationally. He is in charge of the Indian national team and also coaches at the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy .

The beginning

We had an outdoor badminton court in front of our house in Trivandrum . That's where my father and his friends used to play in the evenings. It was a floodlit court and we used to watch them play. Then in between games they used to give us their racquets. It was a mud court covered with cow dung.

Me and my elder brother (Vivek) used to play in between games. My father was very keen on badminton because he had watched the Trivandrum nationals in 1960 and he was impressed watching Nandu Natekar play. So he always liked badminton and he initiated me into the game.

Then later in one of the summer camps I was put to a tournament organised by the Indian YMCA and they made me play the tournament. So that's how I started competitive badminton. I was just in fourth standard in 1971. That was a good experience, even though I lost in the first round. A lot of children had moved in from Malaysia and Singapore because there were riots there at that time, between the Malays and the Chinese. Indians were affected as well, and had moved back into India . So a lot of schools had these kids from Malaysia , and they were good at badminton. We all played in the YMCA tournaments and it was quite competitive and really nice.

Early mentors

Then I started playing and everybody encouraged me. They said I was good and the main person who encouraged me was Peter Bernard Pereira, the bishop of Trivandrum . He used to watch the matches and encouraged me to play seriously. Then my father took membership for Sri Moolam club. The fee was Rs 3,000, and it was costly in those days.

Basically, in school we used to play cricket and kabaddi and such things... It was the normal thing a child would do. I used to play a lot of hockey as well, and badminton in the evenings at home.

Or we used to get up at 4 in the morning when the air was very still. We used to put the lights on and play from four to six in the morning.

Then I was introduced to one of the top coaches in Kerala, Mr. Balagopal. He's now very old. I attended one of his summer camps, and he taught me the basics. Then another coach came, Mr. Shivaramakrishnan. He's retired now. He'd done the NIS course, and he helped me a lot.

A neighbourhood affair

We had lot of land in front of our house so we had a proper badminton court. And all the neighbours used to play. Now we've moved out of that place, and we sold it. They've built a house there, it's all gone now. I feel very sad now, whenever I go to Trivandrum and I see that place. It was bought by another person and he's built a house there.

At school I became a champion, we used to have regular school tournaments, because all these Malaysian kids who had joined, they all used to play. It was outdoor badminton, we used to play in the afternoons. The teachers encouraged me, because there were few from Kerala in the national team. They gave me leave, and when I went to college also they were supportive.

I joined the National team in 1979 when I was a junior, and they gave me an opportunity against the visiting Malaysians at Calcutta .

Shy at school

Other things helped. The government sponsored me to go to England in 1979 when I was just 17, to play some small country tournaments.

The neighbours and teachers were very nice. Because at that time not many people used to go to foreign countries, although of course the Gulf thing was there. So the teachers used to ask me. I never used to like that. I used to dread going to college because the teachers used to ask me about my experience in England and other places. I used to feel very shy talking to them.

They used to ask me to speak in front of the school.

Pressure at the top

At that time Prakash (Padukone) was doing very well, we used to look up to him and Syed Modi. They said I was very promising. There were a lot of expectations, so I got bogged down by that. I used to lose a lot of matches because my temperament wasn't very good to succeed at the highest level. But we didn't have proper guidance.

Now the work at the academy gives me a lot of satisfaction to work with players. So I enjoy my coaching now, and I feel I can give back to the game.

Back to school

Recently, we had 25 years of 10 standard at Model School , and they made me speak. In fact all the teachers assembled and we had a one-day class and we sat in class wearing our uniform, a black-and-white dress. So that was really nice. All the old teachers came… all them are 70, 75, some are even 80. About 60 teachers came.

I was the first from school to play for the country. After that badminton picked up in Kerala, and a lot of players came, now you can see a lot of doubles players in the national team.