Rugby
Step onto the training field with the India Women's 15s rugby team
As the women’s national team prepares for its first-ever competitive match in the long format of rugby, Deepti Patwardhan catches up with the coaches and players at a training camp in Mumbai.
India women's rugby team will play its first 15-a-side tournament in June
© Aditya Narvekar
At one of the city’s oldest sports institutions, one of the country’s youngest games is striving to get up on its feet. Quite literally too.
There’s a lot of getting beat, falling, shouting and instructing on the rugby field as a group of 45 women are preparing for their longest leap yet.
Established in 1875 and the venue of India’s first cricket Test match in December 1933, the Bombay Gymkhana is currently hosting the national camp for the Indian women’s rugby team. Like the gymkhana itself, women’s rugby is now on the fringes of India’s sporting landscape. But the national team is getting an upgrade. After playing in Rugby Sevens for nine years, the women’s team is making its international debut in 15-a-side rugby with a tri-nation tournament in Singapore in June 2018.
Nasser Hussain (third from left) coaches the team
© Aditya Narvekar
“It’s massive,” says former India men’s team captain Nasser Hussain, who is now coaching the women’s team. “In Asia, there are 31 countries playing rugby, and in women’s 15s there were only three — Hong Kong, Japan and Kazakhstan. They are traditional rugby-playing countries in Asia. The Division I that we are competing in will be against Singapore and Philippines. So there will be six countries in Asia now playing 15s rugby; it’s a huge step for us to be in that category.”
India will face-off against hosts Singapore in the opening game of the Asia Rugby Women’s Championships Div I on June 2. They next take on the Philippines on June 5, and the tournament concludes with a clash between Singapore and Philippines on June 8.
The 15-a-side format involves more contact than Rugby Sevens
© Aditya Narvekar
Incidentally, the Indian men’s 15-a-side team had also made their international debut against Singapore, in Singapore, in 1998, and Hussain was a member of that trailblazing team.
“We lost 85-0, so it wasn’t the nicest of debuts. But it was a learning curve,” recalls Hussain. “I just hope it’s not going to leave a sour taste when they [women’s team] go into internationals. The fact that all the teams are playing for the first time puts them on par. We actually don’t know what to expect, we could be surprised, or we could pull off an upset.”
Contact drills help the players prepare for heavy tackles
© Aditya Narvekar
Adjusting to the longer format
Even though a lot of the 45 players called for the national camp — the final squad will be of 26 — have considerable experience in Rugby Sevens, they are treading unchartered territory with the 15s games. To help them ease into the longer, grittier format, the Indian Rugby Football Union (IRFU, Indian rugby’s governing body) had introduced a 15-a-side national tournament in 2016.
“This is the traditional form, the real rugby,” says Neha Pardeshi, who has been a member of the women’s rugby team since their Sevens debut in 2009. “It’s a different approach to rugby. In Sevens, it’s all about the ball possession. In 15s, it’s the ground that you gain. [How we gain] that one meter of ground is what we need to learn.”
The difference in formats is obvious with 15 players rather than seven sharing the 100m x 70m rugby field, constricting elbow room. Additionally, the total game duration in Sevens is 14 minutes while each half in 15-a-side lasts 40 minutes. In cricket parlance, it’s quick-pulsed Twenty20 versus the veritable Tests.
The team has also been focusing on passing drills
© Aditya Narvekar
“I remember the first time we played 15s; we mixed players from Mumbai and Pune. It was just to start promoting the game,” says Vabhiz Bharucha. “[That first match] was at a very amateur level. There was absolutely no structure. We were running, hitting, did something and scored a try. We came back and asked how long has it been? They said it’s just been five minutes. In an ideal (Sevens) situation, we would have said two minutes more, just push it. But in this match, we knew we were playing 20 minutes a half, and we were winded.”
The 15-a-side format demands not only a higher level of endurance to last the 80 minutes but also a great deal of grittiness to absorb a lot of blows. In Sevens, players get ample space on the field to just run through the opposition defence. In 15s, many more players are waiting to tackle you with the hard-hitting blows that rugby is known for. The longer format needs precise strategies to break down and build up plays.
“That’s the fun of it,” says Subhalaxmi Barik, a mother of a three-year-old boy. “All of us like 15s because it has a lot of contact. There are lots of new rules we have to learn. We need a lot of stamina, strength, power. The teams we are playing against, their diet and lifestyle is very different. We may not be as strong as them but we have a lot of determination. I will work so hard that I won’t even be one step behind those other girls. Apna khud ko bhi daal dungi (I will immerse myself into the game completely).”
The front row of the scrum has a hook (white) and two props on either side
© Aditya Narvekar
The hook tries to kick the ball back towards her pack
© Aditya Narvekar
Step 1: The teams line-up with two rows and a number eight at the back
© Sushant Kulshrestha
Step 2: The front rows get ready to engage
© Sushant Kulshrestha
Making sacrifices
It is the willingness of players like Barik to put their body on the line that has seen rugby grow considerably in the country in the past decade. The 28-year-old Barik, who has been playing rugby for the past four years, has to constantly juggle between being a mother, working as a forest ranger in Odisha, and being a national rugby player.
“I get only about four-five hours sleep every day,” she says. “But even if I have 30 minutes to spare, I go to a field nearby and throw the ball about with my brother.” She trains in Bhubaneshwar with other ruggers from the state once or twice a week. Knowing that the 15s format calls for increased contact and strength, the lean Barik has been making some time to work in the gym.
“I can now squat about 75 kg,” she beams while recalling that she weighs considerably less herself. “Nowadays I get up at two in the morning to watch rugby 15s videos. I can’t sleep; I’m so excited to play the game.”
Each team lifts a player high to receive the ball during a line-out
© Aditya Narvekar
Another super mom in the team, Sangeeta Das, is a sprinter and has been pursuing 100m running (nationals) as well as rugby for the past eight years. She plays for one of the famous Kolkata rugby clubs — the Jungle Crows — works as sub-inspector of Kolkata Police, and went some length to make sure she could keep up her active lifestyle.
“When I was in the delivery room, the doctor told me to go for a C-section. The baby weighed more than four kgs, and the doctors said it was near impossible to do a normal delivery,” she recalls. “But I insisted that it be normal because I wanted to get back to playing sports. Doctors made me sign a bond and then did a normal delivery.” Eight months after she gave birth to a boy in 2015, and weighing 90 kgs, Das returned to training. The muscular mom is one of the more experienced in the group and will play as a forward in Singapore.
The women's team makes up in effort what it lacks in size and strength
© Aditya Narvekar
The positives and the areas to work on
For the past nine years, the success of the Indian women’s rugby team has been closely linked with their pace on the wings. While players from traditional hubs like Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata are technically sound, it’s the speed of the girls from Central India that has helped raise the bar. In 2017, when India won a silver medal in the Asia Rugby Women’s Sevens Trophy in Vientiane, Laos, six of the players were from Odisha. 20-year-old Hupi Majhi scored the tournament’s joint-highest of six tries.
“In Sevens you can just take the ball and run as fast as you can,” says Majhi. “But in 15s you need strength, body weight and need to use your brains.” The spindly women from Odisha may be at a slight disadvantage in this format, but they are willing to grind through.
Smaller, faster players have been the secret to India's success
© Aditya Narvekar
“Size has always been a problem for us when we play at a senior level. We can’t really do anything about it,” says coach Hussain, who has also played pro rugby for Tynedale RFC in England.
“Unfortunately, genetically a lot of the girls are physically smaller than other teams. In Sevens you would typically have your fit, fast players, whereas in 15s you still have a role for the bigger, bulkier players, who have a specific responsibility on the field. That kind of opens up a lot more players to taking up the game. That’s why they say rugby is a sport for all shapes and sizes; you need a really quick, agile player on the wing, and at the same time you need someone who is really strong to make your scrum sturdy and give you a platform to work off.”
Sangeeta Das (centre) is one of the strongest players in the team
© Sushant Kulshrestha
Scrums. Rucks. Line-outs. The women practice them meticulously, over and over again. How to throw, how to communicate, how to pass, how to fall, how to get up, how to protect each other — they are being put through drills constantly. It’s a collective of players from hubs like Mumbai and Pune, conversing in rugby with counterparts from Odisha, West Bengal, New Delhi, and even Goa. Everything is flying at them with great speed, and they are facing up to it bravely.
“This whole transition from Sevens to 15 made me feel like I am very strong,” says Pardeshi, articulating it for her teammates. “This whole self-realisation has happened — how hard it could be, and how hard I could take it.”
Each player attending the camp is being tried out for specific positions, with testing on specific challenges. It is a far cry from when India made its Sevens international debut with a squad of players drawn from other disciplines like football, kho-kho, athletics and kabaddi. India was keen on breaking the glass ceiling to make the contact sport more visible then. It is about treading higher ground and gaining vital yards now.
Stretching after the training session
© Sushant Kulshrestha
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