TN’s kabaddi pride chosen for Dhyan Chand award

CHENNAI: As a player, despite winning four consecutive gold medals since 2007 in Indian colours on the international stage, Kavitha Selvaraj did not get the Arjuna award. She eventually hung up her boots in 2013 dejected by the lack of national recognition.

A decade after leaving her sporting career and a job with the Tamil Nadu police to start a family, the 37-year-old became the first female sportsperson from Tamil Nadu to be chosen for the Dhyan Chand award for lifetime achievement in Sports and Games, which honours sportspersons who have contributed by their performance and continue to contribute to the promotion of sports even after their retirement.

Her resurrection happened in 2019 when she joined the National Institute of Sports (NIS) to get her coaching qualification.

“My husband and in-laws, who were aware of my past achievements, could see that I was struggling inside and egged me to try coaching. It was the signal I was waiting for,” Kavitha told DT Next.

Vindicating their faith, she got fast-tracked into coaching the Indian women’s kabaddi team, which won the gold medal at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou.

As a player, Kavitha was part of the Indian team which won a Gold medal in the 2010 Asian Games held in Guangzhou. In the years preceding, she was part of the victorious national team which won Gold at the Asian championships held in 2007 and 2008 and the 2009 South Asian Games.

The last of five daughters, Kavitha grew up in Avadi. Noting her athletic prowess, she was drawn into the school’s kabaddi team and she says she never looked back after that.

“My mother died when I was 14. She used to be worried when I took up sports, but my father, Selvaraj, with his humble job at the transport corporation, continued to support me. He encouraged me to join college in Chennai to pursue sports,” Kavitha recalled.

Kavitha to coach State aspirants for nat’l team

In 2005, when she was a final-year student at Quaid-E-Millath College for Women, she joined the police department.

“I did not join through the sports quota. I could not pinpoint the exact reason why, but I wanted to play kabaddi for the TN police team,” Kavitha said.

As a police constable, Kavitha got her first break in 2006 when she got selected for the national camp. For the next four years, she was a mainstay in the Indian women’s kabaddi team, winning international laurels. In 2013, Kavitha resigned from the department as she felt that her kabaddi achievements were not acknowledged enough by her employer. She got married the same year and her son was born in 2018.

“Between 2013-2018, I did not watch any sports events on TV. I was simply not interested. I used to cry profusely while washing vessels, thinking about what I could have become,” Kavitha said.

Her resurrection has a cinematic tinge to it. When her family wanted to watch a 2019 Tamil movie, Bigil, Kavitha was not very keen on it as she was avoiding anything sports at that time. "A song in the movie, Singapenne disturbed me pretty bad and shook me up. In a way, I partly owe my resurrection to that song," Kavitha told DT Next. She was not aware that the song was composed by Oscar winner A R Rahman when asked if she was a fan.

After a two-year stint with the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre in Gujarat, she joined the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT) as a coach two weeks ago.

“Even now, in the current national team, there is no representation from Tamil Nadu. I want to develop players from the State for the national team,” Kavitha said.