Kho Kho hero Dr. Siddharth Patwardhan became nostalgic. Dr. Siddharth Patwardhan is the Kho Kho hero of nineties. He is the star who won many battles for his state Maharashtra with just good stamina and the ability to dodge opponents. He regarded the Kho Kho star of yesteryears when the game was played but was not aired on television when there were no rule books for International tournaments.
“Those were the Golden Days of the Game”. Dr Patwardhan remembers.
Today, Dr Siddharth is a successful professor and scientist leading the Green Nanomaterials Research group at the University of Sheffield (UK). His group performs cutting-edge research on sustainable and economical processes and products for water treatment, medicine and energy applications.
He is a decorated professor at the University. However, the roots of this success sowed in the game of Kho Kho. He believes that playing kho kho at the national level has contributed tremendously to building his personality. Particularly, it taught him the value of grit, persistence, extremely hard work, resilience, competitiveness and teamwork.
Kho Kho game of national importance
“Kho-kho has also helped me understand myself, know my limits and taught me how to push/challenge myself. I realized that these attributes have a profound impact on who I am and my current professional success”, Dr Siddharth Explains.
Dr. Patwardhan spoke to Newsinterpretation about his journey. He is a scientist by profession but a player at heart. After moving to England he plays table tennis with friends. As Kho Kho is not played in England cricket has become his favourite game but he played a bit of kabaddi, aatya-paatya, langadi, badminton, swimming and racket-ball American version of squash during his tenure as a sportsman.
Given the pace of kho kho, we had developed a great sense of non-verbal communication and trust between teammates that even 25 years on, it has not faded. A lot of credit for this goes to our coach Avinash Phatak, who devoted many years to construct, shape and sharpen us and many teams.
He remembered the days of 1990 the time when Kho Kho was not recognised and played internationally. It was nearly impossible to follow kho kho beyond where we played, On TV it never aired or broadcasted.
Though he is not following any Kho Kho players now, he liked a few local players from Pune. He names Kedar Joshi, Pushkar Barve and Ashish Kulkarni, and a contemporary from the opposition – Nikhil Sane.
Conclusion
He further elaborates that “Kho kho built such a strong bond between the team and we have become best friends for life”.
In the era when we are discussing the Kho Kho leagues. There were millions of dollars in investments in the game, Dr. Patwardhan remains the witness of that Golden Era of the game. He played only for the feeling of satisfaction and achievement.
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