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The expats in sport
S. MUTHIAH
IN JUST six years, Madras has become not only a major rugby nursery but the city has produced the top teams in both the XVs and 7s. In winning the national titles in both versions of Rugby Union during the last few months, Madras brought to an end the dominance of the Bombay Gymkhana and the Calcutta Football Club, the last bastions of the game after it began fading out in India with the exit of the British expats in the 1960s. The man responsible for this has been not a British expat, but an enthusiast from America, where the game has begun to spread only during the last 25 years.
Patrick Davenport, together with Mohan Krishna, president and founder member of the Tamil Nadu Rugby Football Union, and Emil Vartazarian, an Armenian from Calcutta, who is possibly the best rugger player in the country and is a full time coach in Madras, have not only created a champion team in the Chennai Cheetahs but have about 2000 playing the game in the city — in the police, in half a dozen other teams and in about 30 schools. And they have revived the game — first introduced in Madras in the 1860s at the Madras Gymkhana and in the plantation country — in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pondicherry.
Davenport played for Michigan State University (1984 to 1988) and for the Detroit Rugby Football Club before moving to Hong Kong. There he played at a higher level with mainly the Commonwealth expat club, Happy Valley, before turning out for the Causeway Bay Club, a mainly Chinese team (1994 to 1997). When he moved to India, he helped to introduce the game in the Capital, forming the Delhi Cobras and organising the first national 7s tournament. Moving to Madras in 1998, he helped form the Chennai Cheetahs and then, in 2001, the Tamil Nadu Rugby Football Union. The rest is a story of steady growth and achievement.
Playing a significant role in the achievements of the Cheetahs this year has been another American, Pete Martin, who was chosen as the player of the tournament in the recent national 7s played in Madras.
Martin, now a consular officer in Madras had played for Dartmouth University (1993 to 1998) in New Hampshire and was selected for the Northeast Zone for the interzonal tournament held to pick the U.S. team, the American Eagles. The Eagles have, in the last three World Cups made steady progress to be among the better teams outside `the Big 8'.
Expecting to move to Madras is Willie Heteraka, the burly Maori, who was brought out to India in 2003 by the Indian RFU to develop the game in the Army. Heteraka was the coach of the New Zealand All-Maori team and an All-Blacks selector.
Other expats making a contribution to Madras sport are:
Elizabeth Davenport, who met her husband at Michigan State, Lansing, while lifting weights training for the University's swimming squad. A nationally ranked swimmer in the U.S. while in college, she retired from the sport after marriage, but is now Aquatics Director at the American International School here and helps Australian Mark Terchovs with the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu's swimming programme.
Brett Mace, another Australian has been in Madras for the last five years, and has been coaching both the State and National Triathlon Teams.
And Major Manikam of Malaysia has been playing a major role in the rapid progress to the country's top squash players, particularly those from Tamil Nadu.
Maybe it is time we had more of these expats willing to call Madras home if we are to shoot for higher honours in international sport.
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