In a class of his own

Not quite old to give up at 27, and with that famed ability to commit 100 per cent when on the field, Rasquinha was blessed with a mind that demolished attacking moves of opponents with calculation and a hockey stick that was a feared weapon. There was also the possibility of a comeback—redemption in the Olympic year—which no coach or player would have thought impossible had he wanted it. Yet the script had turned track, like it does so often in TV soaps, more intriguingly in India’s hockey morass.

“I was fit when I was dropped. The rest is the selectors’ call,” Rasquinha says with a hint of hurt. “After being dropped for the Asian Games, I was sad and upset for a couple of weeks. But I believe if you are good enough, you’ll find a place. I was practical. It was time to move on. I always wanted to study, and as an India player you travel for 11 months, and spend the remaining one simply recovering. I started studying at the first opportunity I got, owing to that break.”
He immersed himself in books, spending four hours at his MBA entrance classes and talking hockey with playmates. Rasquinha had negotiated this dual-life before: he had captained his school football and hockey teams, even while ranking 13th in his Class X exams.

The former centre-half does own that his fitness levels dipped this time. “Joaquim (Carvalho) called me back for the camp. But it was intense—as it should be. Those 5-6 days were torture. I returned since I had my GMAT exam a week later and I couldn’t have possibly expected another call-up,” he says.
But hockey it was that planted the seeds to his career-switch. In 2003, Rasquinha had stayed at the ISB for three weeks, ahead of Afro-Asian Games. Impressed with the campus, the faculty and having interacted with the alumni later, his mind was made up about the future.

Rasquinha hasn’t read Harry Potter and is not privy to Dumbledore’s discourse on making choices. But hooked to Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese? these days, he insists he Hawed, didn’t Hem by choosing to move on and not let the fear of the unknown play on his mind.

But it wasn’t as uncharted a territory as one would think it’d be for a hockey player. His own background apart, the Mumbai boy had the benefit of an academic family—mother Merlyn is a reputed doctor in the neighbourhood and his two brothers are computer engineers in the US. Not many hockey players in the country have the support system nor indeed do they put their minds to think of a back-up. “Ninety-five per cent players are clueless after they stop playing. I’ve pushed some to at least become graduates,” he says. Unlike cricket, the emotional and financial returns from hockey are pitiful—a 30 USD match fee and a hockey job thereafter can’t really secure your future.
So, even as Bandra’s hockey tradition inspired him, his city’s flirtations with celebdom made him aware of the ephemeral. He finds trophies funny now, but keeps monument-miniatures from wherever he travels.

“I hero-worshipped the best hockey-player in my lane as a child, and I’ve pocketed grass-tufts when the astro-turf first came to Bombay Hockey Association. But I also know that people have very short memories. They forget very fast and in two weeks, I’ll be out of the headlines,” he says.

Victory and defeat, he says, are sport’s two impostors. Tough to say if Rasquinha’s the first Indian hockey player to quote Kipling. But he’s certainly the first in many years to go out with the equanimity required to think deeply, not bitterly—about quitting.

Curiously though, Rasquinha’s retirement—though considered 3-4 years premature—and its MBA-follow-up, is heralded in hockey circles as preparation for a greater role in the sport. “He’ll make it big. And he’ll be back in the game in some capacity,” says buddy and teammate Adrian D’Souza.

Says Dhanraj Pillay, “It takes a lot of time to make a player. Replacing him—his intelligence on the field—will be difficult. But be assured, he’ll become a big man and be around for hockey in coming years.”

“I’ll be around hockey, but in what capacity, and in what time-frame I’m not sure,” says Rasquinha. “I’m ambitious and a big position will give me the freedom to put my thoughts to action, which as a player I frustratingly couldn’t.” Sports media, management and marketing is his wide scope, and he knows first-hand that the game is challenged in coaching and promotion at the grassroots level.
“Sports is catching up fast and watched most after entertainment but is badly managed. I’d want athletes to just concentrate on the game and coaches to plan and strategise, not juggle hotel accommodation,” he says.

He may appear to have left the field in a hurry and has even been accused of giving up. But Rasquinha’s standout quality was his ability to take it one game at a time. To never needlessly rush. The king will take his own time to return.