Rani Rampal

#30/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Rani Rampal is an Indian field hockey player. At the age of 15, she was the youngest player in the national team which participated in the 2010 World Cup.

Rani was born on 4 December 1994 in Shahabad, Markanda, a mofussil town of 45,000 inhabitants in the Kurukshetra district of Haryana, to a poor family. Shahabad is to women’s hockey what Sansarpur in Jalandhar once was to men’s hockey, or to the cricket-minded, what Mumbai has been to the Indian team. About 45 players have represented India at senior and junior levels, and Rani is one of them. Her father works as a cart-puller (actually he owns a horse cart). She took to field hockey in 2003 and trained at the Shahbad Hockey Academy under Baldev Singh, a recipient of Dronacharya Award. As she started to play professionally, GoSports Foundation, a sports non-governmental organization provided her with monetary and non-monetary support as her family found it hard to support her dreams financially.

Unlike the men of Sansarpur and Mumbai, Shahabad’s daughters including Rani, in this land of khap panchayats, have broken a seemingly impenetrable glass ceiling too. They have chosen to step out of the four walls, wear shorts and skirts, and take up a pursuit mostly reserved for men. Thanks to their determination and achievements, this way of life is now — willingly or grudgingly — accepted. There’s hope that soon it will probably be celebrated even. For, the women’s hockey team await the confirmation of their maiden qualification to the 2016 Olympics, due to come in October. And India stands on the cusp of history, courtesy the stick of the supremely gifted Rani Rampal. In the World Hockey League semifinals in Belgium earlier this month, she scored the equaliser and the final sudden-death goal in a must-win match against Italy, before scoring the winner against Japan in the last do-or-die encounter. Her decisive interventions meant India finished fifth, which was good enough to all but make the Rio Games.

Rani played in the Champion's Challenge Tournament held in Kazan, Russia in June 2009 and empowered India to a win by scoring 4 goals in the finals. She was adjudged “The Top Goal Scorer” and the “Young Player of the Tournament.” She was also instrumental in winning the silver medal for the Indian team in the Asia Cup held in November 2009. After playing with India's national team at 2010 Commonwealth Games and 2010 Asian Games, Rani Rampal was included in the FIH Women's All Star Team of 2010. She was also included the All Star team of the Asian Hockey Federation based on her performance in 2010 Asian Games at Guangzhou, where the Indian team finished fourth.

At the 2010 Women’s Hockey World Cup held in Rosario, Argentina, she scored a total of seven goals which placed India in the ninth position in World Women's hockey rankings. This was India's best performance since 1978. She is the only Indian to be nominated for the FIH Women's Young Player of the Year Award (2010). She was conferred the “Best Young Player of the Tournament” award at the Women's Hockey World Cup 2010, recognizing her stellar performance as the top field goal scorer in the tournament. She was also adjudged the 'Player of the Tournament' at the 2013 Junior World Cup which India finished with a bronze medal. She was also named for FICCI Comeback of the Year Award 2014.

Recalling the start of Rani’s journey, her father explained, “Mushkil to tha shuru-shuru mein.” Rampal then narrates the story of how he and his wife — one semi-literate, the other illiterate — decided that their six-year-old daughter should not only be sent to school but also enrolled in the town’s hockey academy. There was no precedent in the neighbourhood. Relatives opposed them. Some even questioned the couple’s sanity. Their efforts almost came unstuck on the first day. The academy, which was situated in Rani’s school, had a disciplinarian coach, Baldev Singh. “He saw Rani and he rejected her right away,” recalls Rampal. “He said she was too frail.” The couple didn’t give up and went back the next day. “Perhaps he was in a good mood, because he relented and told Rani to run a few laps around the field,” Rampal remembers. “She did, and he was impressed with her agility. He agreed to coach Rani.”

Baldev Singh, who would later get the Dronacharya award, the highest decoration for a coach in India, remembers the incident differently. It wasn’t down to his mood. “The first thing that struck me was their poverty. But it wasn’t because she was poor or frail that I had declined. It’s just that as a rule we didn’t take any girl under eight. She was barely six, and looked even smaller. But she was so gifted that I had to relax the rule for her. And I am glad I did,” Baldev says.

She was the youngest in the academy, and in the years to come she would be the youngest ever in the Indian team. In 2009, even before she played with the junior national team, Rani made her senior India debut aged 14. Fourteen! Our collective idea of a child prodigy, Sachin Tendulkar, had made his India debut when he was 16. It was an emphatic start; she hammered four goals in the final to give India the title. She finished as the top-scorer in the tournament. “That Champions Challenge tournament in Russia was also one of the stages of the London Olympics qualification process,” says Rani. “I had no idea then what the Olympics were, and why it was such a big fuss. I was playing for fun. For me, back then, the biggest deal was the Commonwealth Games,” she says, shyly.

It’s a statement that puts the Indian women’s hockey team’s latest achievement into perspective. The men in our hockey have grown up on the lore of eight Olympic gold medals. In fact, in all non-cricket sports nowadays, our performance in the Olympics is the main yardstick. The only time an Indian women’s hockey team has appeared in the Olympics was in Moscow 1980, and they were invited to make up the numbers after the West had boycotted. In the absence of Olympic glory or even participation, therefore, India women’s hockey team’s most storied achievement remains the gold medal in the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Hence, Rani’s fascination with the CWG. To her, these three letters also mean hope and despair. She remembers the awards and the accolades that the Class of 2002 got. Some, like her mentor Suman Bala, were from Shahabad. Heck, their story inspired the Hindi film Chak De! India.

Rani remembers, too, the awards and accolades that the team of 2010, of which she was a part, didn’t get at CWG Delhi, having missed out on the medal round on goal difference. And the disappointment when the Haryana government opened its purse for all 2010 CWG medal winners from the state. Later that year, 15-year-old Rani was named in the International Hockey Federation’s World XI. But individual honours such as these don’t yield cash prizes. Her father had to keep spurring the horse to put food on the table. “It embarrasses me and pains me to see my father having to drive the cart around even now. But there are no other options. I don’t earn enough,” says Rani, who works as a junior clerk in the railways. “But it’s my source of strength too. You earlier asked me why I don’t get nervous. I will tell you why. We were trailing against Italy, and in the sudden death, I was thinking about my father. I couldn’t afford to be nervous,” Rani says. 

Rani is now part of the Indian Olympics contingent. Olympian Rani. Six years ago, she wouldn’t have given this adjective much of a thought. But today, it’s become a necessity, an obsession and a possible panacea even for her struggles. She feels that a shot at the Olympics will land her a job better than the one she has right now, and provide some sort of financial security to the family. She contrasts her position with Sandeep Singh, one of the two Olympians from Shahabad (the other being former hockey player Sanjeev Dang). Sandeep is a deputy superintendent of police with Haryana police. He lives in the posh HUDA society. In hockey as in life, Rani and Sandeep Singh have few similarities. Sandeep is a good defender and a very fine drag-flicker. She is a striker who often doubles as a mid-fielder. Whenever there is a comparison across the gender divide, Rani is deemed to be more like Sardar Singh. Her electric speed, superior stick work, ball sense and confidence remind you of the current India captain. “Sardar Singh is here,” Rani says, bringing her palm parallel to her eyes, indicating a certain stature. “And I am here,” she says, lowering it all the way to her knee. But she is flattered by the comparison. “Do you know we belong to the same community of potters?” Rani says. “And that he was also named in the FIH All Star in 2010? But he is a big, big name. And also a DSP,” she says. What remains unsaid is this: Sardar earns big bucks in the Hockey Indian League, too, while there is no such thing for a women’s hockey player.

While there is some envy and lament in Rani’s statement, there is also a bit of acceptance of a harsh reality. Rani and her ilk have overcome a rigid, feudal society. They have even become a source of pride in a town whose sex ratio (860) is significantly worse than the rest of the state (879) — which in turn is the worst in the country. But they are helpless against the inherent bias in Indian hockey, Indian sport and the Indian attitude in general. Encouraging its daughters to play isn’t a priority for India. Beti Khilao is not a slogan yet. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.