Soccer matches on sand replace beach cricket

The audible sound of bat hitting cricket ball was one of the regular background noises at any city beach in months gone by. The beaches would be filled with cricket-crazy teenagers playing the game that obsesses our nation. Now, the ban on playing cricket on beaches has led the young players to switch to football. Irfan, a third-year B.Com student and now a team member of the Y2K football team from Triplicane, remarks, “My friends and I used to play cricket on the Marina Beach, but now that it is not possible, so we have joined our local football team, Y2K.”
Cricket may have topped their list, but football has slowly been gaining cult status among these youngsters. City football teams that currently generate the most excitement — Sand Sharks, Stunners, Alexander Football Champions and United 7 — all from Besant Nagar, while the Karma Football Champions team is from Tiruvanmiyur.
The Sand Sharks team conducts the prestigious Bessy Beach Championship (BBC) twice a year. This year the Stunners snatched the trophy while United 7 were the runners- up. The players take their football seriously, are a disciplined lot and each team has an organised structure, with a captain, manager and team players. Varun Balakrishnan, the team captain of Sand Sharks says, “I have the responsibility of selecting the players for my team and the positions they will play in, like striker or goal keeper.”
Madhav, the captain of the Stunners and a first year student of Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering says, “Almost all our team members are college students. So we wake up at 5am and play till 7am. Sometimes we carry our college books and change of clothes to the ground so that we can go to college straight from there. Later in the day we meet again, at 6.30pm and play for as long as 9.30pm. We hold our final games on Sundays.”
Most of them have their own team T-shirts for a professional appeal. Arvind, the captain of United 7 proudly states, “Our team tee is white coloured with a picture of shark.” And like at any other tournament, a well-known local personality is called to give away the trophy. J.G. Dhwarakanath of Sand Sharks explains, “Mr. Gajapathy, inspector at Besant Nagar Police station, gave us permission to play on the beach. So we called him to give away the prizes.”
These local football teams aspire to be acknowledged at the state level. Nalanko says, “We have been conducting these tournaments for the last three years. If we get the sponsorship we would like to play inter-state matches as well.”