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Fitness, his forte

PHOTO: K. V. SRINIVASAN

FITNESS FIRST Manoj Kumar giving tips to Lakshmipathy Balaji

Circuitous is the word that best describes B. Manoj Kumar’s journey through sport, and between sports. Now the fitness trainer of the Tamil Nadu cricket team, Manoj once represented the state’s football team. Though his entry into big-time football was almost genetically predetermined — his father K. Balagopal captained the Tamil Nadu football team and even played for India — it was by no means straightforward.

“When I joined college, I was primarily a cricketer,” says Manoj. “I played cricket for the college team, but sometime in between I started taking football seriously. When I tried out for the team, the physical director told me that there was only one vacant position — goalkeeper.”

Had the Theagaraya College football team been short of centre forwards then, the wiry Manoj may have become a serial scorer, rather than denier, of goals.

As it happened, Manoj’s career between the uprights blossomed, and he soon earned a place in the state side, which he represented four times in the Santosh Trophy between 1982-83 and 1988-89. Not only did he continue playing top-level football with employer AG’s Office until 95-96, he was also a regular in its cricket and hockey teams. “I was goalkeeper in the hockey team too,” he says with a grin.

Always a fitness fanatic, Manoj began exploring fitness training as a career option towards the end of his career. “At that time there was no Internet, and no formal courses. So I would go to the British Council library and read books about fitness,” he says.

His first break came at Prahlad Cricket Club in 1998. Spells as fitness trainer with Indian Overseas Bank’s hockey, volleyball, cricket and basketball teams followed, before wind and tide swept him towards the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association.

“I must thank Mr. Ramji (fitness trainer Ramji Srinivasan, whose CV includes spells with the Indian cricket team, A1GP Team India and Mumbai Indians) — he brought me to TNCA, and they gave me a chance with the Tamil Nadu under-16 team,” says Manoj. “Then, the TNCA sent me to the NCA (National Cricket Academy, Bangalore) where I finished my level 1 course in 2007-08. After that, I took over as fitness trainer with the Tamil Nadu Ranji team.”

Apart from his work with the team during the season, Manoj acts as personal trainer for key members of the team like Lakshmipathy Balaji and R. Ashwin even during the off-season.

“I think Balaji showed amazing mental toughness to come back from that stress fracture he suffered, and was our best bowler last season,” says Manoj. “Right now, he’s really looking forward to the start of the new season. We’ve already charted out a fitness plan for the next 3-4 months, and we’re now about three weeks into it.”

Juxtapose this attention to detail against how fitness training happened during Manoj’s playing career.

“In my playing days, we had very little emphasis on fitness; we just had basic endurance training — the coaches would make us run here and there.

But there was no concept of sprint training then, like what footballers or fast bowlers now undergo to make their running technique more efficient,” he says, demonstrating with his forearms and elbows improper running technique, and how this can be corrected.

“But I won’t blame the coaches, because awareness wasn’t that high, and we didn’t have very good facilities,” he says. “As goalkeepers, we had to dive around a lot in practice, and we used to play on gravel. That could easily have led to serious injuries.”

It saddens Manoj that the quality of training facilities for footballers is much the same even now — during the recently-concluded Santosh Trophy, coaches and managers expressed dismay and even outrage at the uneven surface of the practice ground allotted to the teams by the Tamil Nadu Football Association.

“The cricketers should consider themselves lucky,” he says. Compared to other sports, cricket now has great infrastructure. The TNCA has provided the players with state-of-the-art facilities, all the latest fitness equipment, a swimming pool. It’s the kind of atmosphere where you enjoy working on your fitness. Plus, the players are paid well — even first class players earn well now, not like the old days when only international players made money.

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