I don’t play as much sport as I watch it! I lover sports! Where does my sporting interest come from? Not many people in my family are interested in sports except for my mother. When I was small I used to remember my mother watching cricket, tennis etc and also telling me about the rules of the game and about the players. That must have been the sole reason for my interest in sports.
Because of the war conditions in Jaffna, I didn’t get to stay after school to play much sports or go to any coaching sessions (only students who were living close to the school or who were in boarding school went to these). I used to play a bit with my cousins and sometimes with friends but not that often. As my school was a bit further away, my friends were scattered around. I didn’t meet them often outside of school. Cousins were not interested in sports as much as I was, so I didn’t manage to convince them to play with me as much as I wanted. The neighbours, well….not sure why I hardly played with them either. I think may be the socio-economic difference might have been the reason for this, even though I myself or my parents didn’t restrict from this as such, the others surrounding me didn’t feel comfortable playing I guess. Then again, it’s my fault for not asking them to play with me. Again, the reason was some of the kids around my age were helping out their parents with farming, etc and didn’t have the time to muck around and play as well, I guess.
Anyway, at that time I was only interested in cricket and tennis to watch and cricket and badminton to play. That’s where my sports interest stopped in Jaffna.
When I moved to New Zealand, I guess I should have taken the opportunity up and gone for coaching in cricket. The first two years I was in Wellington. Since I came to live with my brother and sister at that time, I was still trying to get used to be without parents as well as getting used to the English accent around me. I have to say that my brother was encouraging me to play cricket at least among the Wellington Tamil sports club and I have gone to play as a fill in a few times. But I was not confident at all, as the others seemed to be much better than me. If you have played sports you would know how much the confidence helps when you play. Lack of it makes you suffer. I actually did play a season of cricket for my school’s social team. Again, the lack of confidence was the main reason I played badly.
During my university years, I played for fun and didn’t take it serious enough. This is all cricket I am talking about. At University I started to play a lot more badminton and did become fairly good. I played for the University’s B team. At the same time I also picked up Table Tennis and loved that game. Later on I played Indoor Cricket and enjoyed that a lot too. I also played social squash and later Indoor Netball too. So I can’t say that I didn’t play any sports, but didn’t play to a higher level, which I would have loved to have done. Later on I also played club cricket for two seasons on a social level and enjoyed it, but found it hard to commit so much time, as all of Saturday and some Sundays will go playing for the club and Thursday evenings in practise. Now, I hardly play sports, but I am intending on getting back to playing badminton. On and off we play Indoor Netball in a social league too.
Anyway, that’s enough about me playing sports. As I wrote earlier because of my mother’s interest in watching sports I watched a lot of cricket and tennis when I was in Jaffna. When I came to New Zealand I watched a lot of cricket initially. I think first three or four years I would have watched every single ball of any cricket match that was shown on New Zealand TV. Also after two years I started watching a lot of other sports on TV like Rugby (how can I not, living in New Zealand), NBA Basketball, etc. I think in 2004 World Cup Football was a big highlight for me as that was the start of my passion for Football games. Then I watched most of the major competitions (like World Cup, European Cup, etc). But I started to find it difficult to watch cricket as much as I wanted to because of work. So I started watching less cricket and watched more of the shorter versions of the games. I did always follow cricket with cricinfo though.
Now let me tell you my psyche about supporting sports teams. When I was a kid in Jaffna I always supported India as it had Srikkanth the only Tamilian in world cricket at that time. Later on after the 1987 Indian Peace Keeping force (IPKF)’s attack of our house and harassment that followed, I stopped supporting India. May be West Indies was the only team I liked then. Once I came to New Zealand, I started supporting the New Zealand team and have since been a New Zealand supporter.
Rugby…of course I can only support New Zealand’s All Blacks. In domestic NPC Rugby I supported Canterbury (as I started watching Rugby when I was in Christchurch) then I continued that support to Canterbury Crusaders in Super 12 and now 14.
In NBA I supported Houston Rockets and Hakeem Olajuwon and “Sir” Charles Barkley who played for them at that time. As I was fully in to the games in ’93, ’94, ‘95 season. Then later on I started supporting Toronto Raptors, once the Canadians joined NBA. I also went to two matches in Toronto Raptors home “Sky dome”. For a few seasons I went to support the Manawatu Jets (New Zealand domestic basketball league team)’s all home games. I also worked as a volunteer in helping the administration side of things for the games.
In Football, I could never get myself to support just one team. I have not got into supporting an English premier league team yet. I often support the under dog team that plays out of their skins. Like Chile in ’94 World Cup in USA and Korea in the World Cup ’02 that was held in Korea and Japan.
This year Indian Premier League started up and I supported Chennai Super Kings as first time I had a team that was linked to Tamil’s as Chennai is a city of Tamil Nadu. I enjoyed watching and supporting the team. Chennai Super Kings also did very well and made it to the finals.
If I watch any sports often I support the small or underdogs than a super power. I guess that may be coming from me as I have been in Jaffna and have faced the brutal powers trying to take over our land and Tamils fighting back and preserving our land against all odds. If I support a team that is powerful (like All Blacks), that’s because I am linked to them, not because I choose them as they are clear winners. To be honest, I do not have much respect for the people who support the big powerful names like Ferrari in Formula One; Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal in English Premier League; the biggest names in NBA (like LA Lakers now); etc.
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