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| Narail locals consider purchasing a cricket bat. |
“If
you play cool and concentrate we can win. Don’t be overconfident or hot headed.
It’s not the time for foolish risks.” I’d come to Narail Government High School
field to find the answer to a question. It was lunch break on the day of the
under 14s divisional cricket championship final and coach Md Imrul Kayes, 25,
his face whitened with sunscreen, was half-whispering a pep-talk to his team.
“Don’t forget your role or get distracted at the crease,” he was saying, “The match
is in a vital position. You know what to do.” It sounded like advice for life.
Fahim,
Bappi, Oruno – he’d be relying on his promising batsmen. But with the visitors,
Bagerhat, having set a target of 72, with 22 overs complete, 40 runs on the
board and eight wickets in hand, the situation was far from hopeless. “This is
no time for heroics.”
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| Coach Md Imrul Kayes gives pep-talk to the U14s Narail cricket team during lunch break at the divisional final. |
The
question I sought the answer to was larger than the under 14s. I wanted to know
why Narail District performs so well at sport. One might’ve thought it’d be enough
for a small district to excel in culture – SM Sultan, Bijoy Sarkar and the
others. But no, when it comes to sport, with national champions too many to
list, in cycling, weightlifting, archery, kabbadi, handball, volleyball, table
tennis and cricket – did I name them all – little Narail punches above its
weight.
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| U14s divisional final, Narail vs. Bagerhat. |
Coach
Kayes gave an initial clue: enthusiasm. He plays in third division cricket
himself and dreams of becoming a first division player. And he’s playing the
sport that produced Narail’s most famous player, Mashrafe bin Mortaza, the fast
bowler for the Tigers known affectionately as the ‘Narail Express.’
Mashrafe’s
familial home being just beyond the field I thought to wander over to find out
more from his father Golam Mostafa. “I wanted him to be a doctor,” he says of
his son, “but as a child he was restless, always active. If he wasn’t swimming
he’d be helping himself to green coconuts or lychees from other people’s
trees.” His talent for cricket was “totally God gifted” with no coach or training
at first.
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| Photo of Mashrafe displayed in his family's drawing room. |
Is
it a coincidence the field is close by? Perhaps that’s another clue: Narail
town has open spaces including the stadium and historical Kuriddobe. But open
spaces is a feature common to at least some other district headquarters.
It’s
surely true that success breeds success. Coach Kayes attended the Ataur Rahman
Cricket Academy named after Mashrafe’s grandfather – and it’s about more than
sports stars giving back. It’s about town pride and a belief in winning. It’s
because when that kid down the road made it to the national level why shouldn’t
I? Kayes says he is inspired by the success of Mashrafe and others. I’m certain
he isn’t alone.
Yet
despite his emphasis on the importance of practice, Mostafa believes natural
talent is essential. Similarly, he observes that sporting prowess came
naturally to Narail. From the 1970s the town started to perform well in
kabbadi, weightlifting, cricket and athletics, he remembers, and by the end of
the 1980s table tennis had taken off.
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| At home with Mashrafe's parents. |
So
where was all this talent coming from? Was it something in the town’s rather
salty water which the locals drink often enough not to notice? Was there a
peculiar chemical combination that gave rise to a higher proportion of
naturally gifted sportspeople?
One
person who might know would be Riaz Mahmud Rocky, 24, a national table tennis
champion. You can find him down the road at what’s optimistically called the
Table Tennis Academy. It’s basically a brick shed that’s currently lined with bags of concrete while under renovation. Inside is a slightly dour space featuring the
single functioning ping pong table in town. Perhaps 200 players take turns on
that table, Rocky says, and yet he guesses that up to 90% of top table tennis
players in Bangladesh, men’s and women’s, hail from Narail.
“All
my friends were playing ping pong,” he recalls of the beginnings of his own
career, “I used to watch them and I tried it. It was a way to pass time.” His
protégé Javed Ahmed, 18, meanwhile, says he took up table tennis because the
building was nearby.
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| Riaz Mahmud Rocky at the Narail Table Tennis Academy. |
“As
I got older I started to think about life,” continues Rocky, “I understood the
need for study and a job but I saw that from table tennis some money could
come.” By age 16 Rocky was district captain with a monthly salary of 10,000
taka.
“When
we started to compete outside,” he recalls, “I saw we weren’t bad at it. The
taka prizes encouraged our training.” As his income rose, Rocky’s parents who
had once taken a “Do your schoolwork!” approach to his sport became less
worried. “Before it wasn’t possible to earn a living from table tennis,” he
says, “but now it is.”
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| Rocky and Javed Ahmed spar at the Table Tennis Academy. |
He’s
not the only one to notice. According to local high school physical education
teacher Orun Sarkar, who once went to live in India with his relatives but
missed Narail so dearly that he only lasted four days before returning,
“Earlier people wanted their kids to be doctors or engineers but many now hope
their kids will be sports players.” There’s lots of support in the district for
sport, he says. Rocky takes it a step further, “Sport in Narail is very well
organised.”
Yet
the reality of Narail’s one table suggests facilities are not a major factor in
achieving excellence. Once, while at a training camp in India Rocky was asked
how he practices. He explained the one-table situation. “They were all
laughing,” he says, “But while they had many tables they had no champion
players. Other districts have better opportunities too. We have to wait to play
– but then, when our turn comes we really try. We really enjoy it.”
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| In Narail's Roopganj Bazar, even a bookstore is decorated with sports equipment illustrations. |
Now,
if you want to know why anything is the way it is – little trick – look at
history, and Narail has a colourful one. The main founder of the Narail feudal
estate or jomidari was Kalisankar Roy
who, like his father Ruphram Roy, first served the King of Natore. His father
was faithful and rewarded by being allowed to establish a property in Narail
and build a small house there.
Kalisankar
was healthy and intelligent and known for achieving a task using any means.
Over the years he managed to amass vast tracts of land for himself using other
people’s names – the Natore Raj did not suspect this trickery. He was even
involved in an act of piracy on the Chitra River, and when sepoys were sent
from Jessore to arrest him, with his henchmen, he started a fight. Two sepoys died
and fifteen were wounded. Kalisankar spent time on the run but was later
arrested in Kolkata and ultimately released without conviction from Jessore.
In
place of his father’s small house Kalisankar built a massive palace with dozens
of ponds.[1]
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| The trophy cabinet at Mashrafe's house. |
Now,
while this history might have nothing to do with sport, it’s true that the Roys
are best remembered as Narail’s founders and less for trickery and criminal
cases. It would hardly be the first instance where, once dubiously gotten
wealth has been amassed, inheritors seek to establish genteel credentials.
Subsequent Roy generations are famed for encouraging culture and sport. They
established the Kuriddobe and by the early twentieth century had introduced a
football competition.
The jomidars took advantage of the rich
sporting traditions in Narail’s villages. Lathi
and shorki khela were stick fighting
games where opponents would dance and manoeuvre in an attempt to hit the other.
There’d be the tap-tap-tap of the sticks and players would call
“ali-ali-ali-ali” as they played. Large crowds of spectators would gather. Both
games required skill and were dangerous, but especially shorki khela where the
valid zone for hitting the opponent included not only the waist to feet of
lathi khela but also the ear lobe – but not the ear. The shorki stick could
pierce the human body – mistakes could be fatal. At times of puja Narail’s
jomidars organised jousts.[2]
There
were numerous other games including khol
lathi played by farmers, dhaker bari
which was marginally cricket-like but involved a rectangular wooden puck in
place of a ball – with the potential to blind an eye, danguli – another cricket-like game, and golla chut, where the fastest runners would win. An early version
of kabbadi was called ha-du-du, dug-duga or chol-kut-kut. Yet many of these games do not distinguish Narail
from other districts and besides, history can only take one so far...
 |
| Mukul Chowdhury has represented BD in several sports. |
At
the stadium still in search of an answer I meet Mukul Chowdhury, 35, who
suffered polio as a child which resulted in one of his legs being half the
diameter and shorter than the other. “I was not good at school,” he confesses
to explain his sporting interest – and his supportive parents by habit would
say, “Go, play!” An all-rounder, Chowdhury has represented Bangladesh in
cycling at the 2010 Asian Para Games, in karate in Jharkhand and in football at
the 2013 Special Olympics of the Asia-Pacific Games in Australia.
Chowdhury
notes that in Narail it’s easy to join any sport and when it came to playing
football in Australia he was surprised at the pitch’s smoothness. Chowdhury
suggests “training on rough ground” might actually be an advantage when the
relative ease of a polished field presents itself.
For
national kabbadi player Sharmeen Sultana Rima the path to success was more difficult
than what might be usual for males. “My parents didn’t like the idea of sport,”
she says, “They were really stressed about it. In the villages people said bad
things.” Fortunately Rima had a supportive brother-in-law and an encouraging
coach. Her career has taken her to Thailand, Malaysia, Oman and China – but it
was the day she was selected for the national kabbadi team that she considers
her greatest. Her parents now wish her to pursue her dream to study Bangla; and
also encourage her sport.
“In
Narail the sporting environment is very good,” says Rima, “All twelve months
one or other sport is running. Nearly every national team has one or two
players from Narail.”
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| Sharmeen Sultana Rima (centre) taking lunch at a training camp in Khulna. |
It’s
late in the day when news arrives: it appears Coach Kayes’s pep-talk worked. At
37 overs with four wickets in hand the under 14s have become divisional
champions.
And
yet, to my question there remained no definitive answer. On the bus to Dhaka
was the last chance to shed light on the matter. Beside me sat Md Sujan who was
either 20 or 22 – his parents wrote it down somewhere. At his feet was a large
pot full of pitha cakes such as
village mothers may well send with their younger sons returning to work at a
sweater factory in Savar in order to pay for an older brother’s college education.
He dabbled in cricket but was hardly a sportsman – yet he was from Narail.
There could be no harm in asking...
“The
sporting success...” I ask, “Is it something in Narail’s water?” It proved to
be a poor word choice – Sujan’s face became suddenly burdened with anxiousness over
Narail’s water quality. I rephrased. He thought. “I think they practice a lot,”
he says.
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| In the drawing room of Mashrafe's home. |
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