Asian blind football | A former hammer thrower, the Chennai participant is now the Indian group’s ‘eye’
Asian blind football | A former hammer thrower, the Chennai participant is now the Indian group’s ‘eye’
When Keren Kirubai first noticed blind footballers in motion final 12 months, she was rattled. The Indian Blind Football Federation was organising its first National championship in Chennai in October 2021 and her father’s buddy, who educated Tamil Nadu, had needed her as a goalkeeper. But she refused.
“I was afraid because the goalkeeper is the main player in this thing. Then suddenly, they pulled me for the IBFF reserve team at the National. That’s how I got into this,” stated Keren in a chat with The Hindu on Wednesday.
The reserve group was shaped, with gamers from different sides, to steadiness the draw at the National. And that gave Keren her first style of the sport.
“When I saw from outside, I felt I could stop the ball as only blind players were playing. When I went inside, I knew the difficulty. You can’t judge where they will shoot. With normal-sighted players, you can judge with their body movements, but that is not the case here,” she stated.
“I’ve come here and am learning football now.”
The 21-year-old from Chennai is now one in all the two Indian girls’s group goalkeepers at the IBSA Blind Football Asia / Oceania Championship which begins on Friday. And with solely two girls’s groups right here, India has already certified for subsequent 12 months’s Worlds in Birmingham.
Goalkeepers are a strange tribe in blind football. They are the solely gamers who can see! They are totally sighted whereas the different 4 — blind football is a fives recreation — are totally blind and even have their eyes lined to make it a level-playing discipline.
“The goalkeeper is the eye of the team, she has to position the players,” she stated.
Keren was a good hammer thrower earlier, competing in State-level meets, however the international pandemic stopped it. However, that has been a blessing.
“Being a thrower, she has good power for throwing. In this football, 70 per cent of the game is how the goalkeepers feed you the ball. She has a good arm, she can throw the ball well,” stated Vikram Singh, National champion Maharashtra’s coach and the Indian group’s ‘goal guide’ right here.
But Keren had a language concern too.
“The important thing is how keepers communicate with players, how they guide them is important,” stated Vikram.
“When I first joined the camp, I didn’t know Hindi,” revealed Keren. “And everybody here only knew Hindi. Now, I’m learning Hindi from them and they are learning English from me. Everybody is comfortable.”
