KSEB men and women post spirited wins
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The Mahindra NBA Challenge Basketball League that concluded on Sunday saw department teams such as KSEB, Kerala Police and BSNL take the centre stage.
While KSEB won the competition in both men’s and women’s categories, the newly-constituted Police team managed to make it to the finals in the men’s category. Basketball experts believe that the Challenge was a much-needed exposure for their teams.
“Though the Challenge was held somewhat in an odd time as there was overlapping with the Inter-University and school competitions, it has been a great platform for the various teams to compete and measure their skills,” said Aju Jacob, coach of KSEB women’s team.
As far as KSEB is concerned, the State-run body did not have regular recruitments until the last few years, which had led to the exodus of quality players from its squad to elsewhere.
“In the last two years we had recruitments and that has encouraged players to join the department teams. This victory is also because of that and though most of them are young and inexperienced they played as a team,” says Bibin Chacko, men’s coach.
Earlier, the scenario was unhealthy for the departments. Once the senior players completed their compulsory years of playing, the teams got drained of talents, as there were no fresh recruitments, but now there is hope.
“We have Anjana S. S and Sini, the two senior players in the team. Their contracts will expire soon but there is no worry as two other talented players, Stephy Nixon and Ashly Mathew, are in the queue to join,” Aju says.
Though the KSEB players are among the best in the state they are not quite challenging against the likes of Southern Railway or ONGC mainly because of the dearth of experience and physical power, but even that is set to change.
“We are now looking out for taller players who can play as well. As the department has started to hire on a regular basis we are sure that more talented players will be willing to come in,” Aju says.
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