Latest news with #BombayGymkhana
Mint
09-07-2025
- Sport
- Mint
Say hello to padel, the racquet sport everyone's playing
Stop with the pickleball mania already. There's another racquet sport whose star is rising and anyone who finds pickleball boring loves it. Say hello to padel—the hottest game in town today. 'It's impossible to find a court in the mornings or after office hours on any given day in Mumbai. Everyone wants to play it and despite a dozen or more courts, I cannot find a free slot if I don't book way in advance," says Tunali Mukherjee, 38, a screenwriter from the city. The padel boom, according to Mukherjee, is insane at the moment. 'There is a luxury club coming up in Worli and another one is in the works in the office district of Lower Parel. There are more than a dozen padel facilities in South Mumbai alone. And most of the legacy clubs such as Radio Club, Cricket Club of India and Bombay Gymkhana have set up a padel court for their members and guests," she adds. Padel courts have also mushroomed in Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi and Gurugram. Mind you, this demand for padel is not in metro cities alone. People in smaller cities and towns, too, are keen on having a go at this sport that is a mix of tennis and squash. Nikhil Singh, 44, who runs a pickleball facility in Jamshedpur, is looking to start a padel court as he feels the steel city has a healthy demand for it thanks to the sport's omnipresence on social media and YouTube. Suraj Juneja, 46, founder of Alt Sports that sets up pickleball and padel courts, says tier 2 and 3 cities want to try out the new racquet sports as much as people in cities want to. 'I am setting up padel courts in Siliguri at the moment," says Juneja. IS PICKLEBALL LOSING FANS? Pickleball has enjoyed a phenomenal rise in popularity across India in the last couple of years. It owes its popularity to the fact that it is an easy sport to learn irrespective of one's racquet skills, athleticism, fitness or mobility. 'Pickleball is a very easy sport. Its learning curve is not at all steep. Even those who have never played any sport ever or aren't sporty or athletic can pick up, and are playing, pickleball without much trouble. A couple of sessions and anyone will appear natural at the game as the pace is manageable and it doesn't involve too much running around or require special skills," says Aarish Ansari, 31, a digital content manager from Mumbai. Ironically, the very reasons that made pickleball popular are now stunting its growth and the sport is drawing a fair bit of flak. Since it is so easy, those who are active or fit are not challenged by pickleball, explains Juneja. As a game, it is slow and people can easily grow bored of it, and the only skill one needs to learn to become good at it is volleying, says Mukherjee. Another thing that goes against pickleball is the noise. Residential complexes across India that have installed pickleball courts have been flooded with complaints from inhabitants about the noise caused by pickleball, which is made of plastic. As Mukherjee notes, it is because pickleball is played with a plastic ball that it is not taken seriously. Among its detractors, pickleball is largely seen as an activity for people who aren't active, have limited racquet skills, and are old. The fact that long retired tennis stars such as Andre Agassi (55), Steffi Graf (56) and John McEnroe (66) are the face of pickleball doesn't help shake off its association with older people. In contrast, padel recently ran a campaign with current tennis stars Iga Swiatek and Daniil Medvedev. It helps matters that several high profile footballers including Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are often spotted playing padel in the media. WHAT MAKES PADEL A SERIOUS, ELITE SPORT Padel sits perfectly in the gap between tennis (not as technical and difficult) and pickleball (not as slow, easy and boring). As padel is much faster and more skilful than pickleball but a lot less technical or difficult than tennis, it is challenging enough for players to upgrade their skills and also fast enough to ensure a good workout. 'Padel is a more serious sport and elite. You need skills to play it," says Ansari, who admits he would switch to padel if he finds three more friends to play it with. That shouldn't be a problem given the meteoric rise the sport is enjoying across the world these days. Floating padel courts have been launched in Miami, Dubai and Switzerland, ski resorts have also set up courts for padel, luxury brands from Chanel and Prada to Balenciaga and luxury watch brand Audemars Piguet have added padel accessories to their offerings and plenty of padel retreats have appeared in Spain, Thailand and Indonesia. Closer home, Mukherjee says the number of people in Mumbai who want to play padel is huge. 'There are thousands of people on all the WhatsApp padel groups that I am a part of." As a sport, padel is relatively more expensive than pickleball. Setting up a padel court is about five times more expensive than setting up a pickleball court, points out Juneja. That means renting a pickleball court is significantly cheaper than renting a padel court. Typically, a pickleball court charges between ₹ 500 to ₹ 1,500 per hour as compared to ₹ 2,000 to ₹ 4,000 per hour for a padel court. Even the pickleball racquets and balls are significantly cheaper than a padel racquet and balls. Padel coaching is also more expensive than employing a pickleball coach of a similar calibre and standing. Mukherjee pays ₹ 30,000 for three months of hour-long sessions two times a week in groups of four. One-on-one coaching can cost anything upwards of ₹ 4,000 per hour. According to Juneja, people who crave a faster pace of play choose padel as it is a much more challenging sport and it feels like a better workout. 'Anyone who is used to playing tennis is more likely to enjoy padel as the scoring system and the balls used are similar. The game requires a certain degree of racquet skills and agility to cover the court. But besides that, the set of people who choose padel over pickleball are those who want to be seen playing a cooler, much more expensive sport that is on the rise, " he says adding, 'Padel is huge in Dubai and many people want to be associated with a sport that is trending in richer countries." Mukherjee belongs to the group with a tennis background and that is what attracted her to padel in the first place. 'What appeals to me about padel is that I can keep upgrading my skills in the sport unlike pickleball, where all you really do is volley. The glass walls add an extra layer of challenge. The cage, hitting the ball off the walls and the faster pace make padel a lot more enjoyable as a sport despite it being a lot less technical than tennis," says Mukherjee. There's also the social aspect of playing padel that she enjoys. 'Playing padel is a lot more fun and productive than sitting in a restaurant or a bar for a couple of hours eating and drinking. Padel is addictive," she confesses. Shrenik Avlani is a writer and editor and the co-author of The Shivfit Way, a book on functional fitness.
Time of India
19-06-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Bombay Gymkhana stands Test of time, is now 150 not out
Mumbai: The iconic Bombay Gymkhana in South Mumbai celebrated its 150th anniversary on Thursday. A number of activities like the unfurling of its flag, singing of the gymkhana anthem and ringing of its bell were part of the celebrations. The opulent, ground-plus-one storey British-era grade 2A heritage structure had hosted the first Test match to be played on Indian soil in December 1933. Lala Amarnath had scored a memorable century in this match against England. C K Nayudu and Douglas Jardine were the rival captains for this Test. "Our gymkhana is a sports powerhouse. We invited our members, who enthusiastically participated in the is a milestone and we wanted to make it memorable," said Bombay Gymkhana's president Sanjiv Saran Mehra. Inaugurated on June 19, 1875, the gymkhana was founded primarily for sports and games. The gymkhana's past president and noted sports journalist Khalid Ansari, in an earlier interaction with TOI, had recalled the colonial masters' aim: "Fostering a heritage where sportsmanship, friendships evolve in a high-quality facility and environment in a socially responsible and friendly manner." Nostalgia pervades the corridors of this institution. One of the stories is about how the famous Parsi philanthropist Sir Cowasji Jehangir donated Rs 1,800 for its construction (at a total cost of Rs 18,625) but was not allowed entry to the clubhouse as its membership was open only to Europeans at that time.
Hindustan Times
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Review: The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trap by Adil Jussawalla
Given its geohistory, Mumbai has attracted the attention of an outrageously large number of chroniclers. Even someone who has never been to the much-mythologised city can experience it through the art it has inspired. Though Mumbaikars may judge this as an inauthentic way of experiencing their metropolis, I too have learnt a lot about the place through its poetry — those ambivalent delights that one turns to, usually in the event of adversity. 85-year-old Adil Jussawalla is one of Mumbai's, or Bombay's, if you will, best-known poets. Wicked, witty, and wondrous, he writes with an ease that signals an internalisation of the city and its people in all their complexity. Much has been written about his journey, which is therefore no longer intriguing. What is definitely intriguing is this Speaking Tiger volume featuring 35 of the poet's prose pieces written between 1980 and 2002. The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trap: Writings from Bombay convinces the reader that when poets turn to prose, each word illuminates as nothing is rendered uncalibrated. In his introduction, An Enduring Unease: Adil Jussawalla in the City, poet, novelist and translator Jerry Pinto writes, 'I remember the exhilaration of seeing a Devnagari letter in an English book and thinking, 'Is this allowed?' But then Adil wasn't very interested in what was allowed and what wasn't. He was interested in words, he was interested in where he was, he was interested because that was another habit of mind: the belief that everyone mattered, and hierarchies were there only to be challenged.' This is evident in the first piece, The Bombay Within, which begins with a bitter truth: 'The waiters of the Bombay Gymkhana remain invisible.' Jussawalla follows this up with: 'So, when you think of it, does most of the city, most of the time. Do we ever look at its details?' Notorious for noticing things, the fine print interests him the most. How the protagonists of this piece — the historian Sharada Dwivedi, poet Rahul Mehrotra, and Jussawalla himself — exit the club is quite telling. The reader is compelled to also appreciate the writer's sense of foreseeability. The titular piece exemplifies this, though many may claim that it developed solely out of a mix of journalistic and poetic impulses. In 1962, at an auction of a 'collection of jewellery and antiques', his friend, Sunil, gifted the poet a late 19th-century article, a 'diamond-encrusted rat trap' which contained a 'tightly-rolled scroll'. Jussawalla wondered if this was Sunil's way of jokingly 'calling [him] a rat'. But when he opened the scroll, there was a 'repetition of certain forms, the gaps between each set of designs clearly indicated'; it was some sort of encryption. He sent it to 'Father Schiller of Ootacamund, an expert on Hindu family codes' and received the decoded text 20 years later, which is reproduced in full in this 1984 piece. The story reveals much: the cyclical nature of karma, an obsession with the foreign and the forbidden, a personal account of the Bombay plague of the 1890s, and the tangential story of Waldemar Haffkine, who was brought to India by the Governor of Bombay to create a vaccine for the epidemic. Interestingly, it was the same institute where 'the plague used to kill [Amarendra Chandra Pandey] had come from'. The concluding paragraph signals that Jussawalla reads the city better than most: 'It's a hot month and my wife and daughter have left the city. Looking at its lights from my balcony, I think a lot of the diamond-encrusted rat trap.' In O City, City from 1993, he writes that Bombay, like every megalopolis, is cruel. But cruelties and tragedies play out differently in life and in the arts. Of the latter he states sombrely, 'We may or may not be moved by what we see.' There are moments of hilarity too. In Want to Get Away? Let Others Do It for You (1997), he writes, 'I've come to believe that the best way of taking a holiday is to stay put; let others do the getting away for you. It can be wonderfully relaxing.' Heeling Process, another example of a succinct piece with a clickbaity title, ruminates on how the individual falls apart when their shoes fall apart. 'That's why I've written several poems on shoes,' Jussawalla concludes. In A Change of Light, he writes that he seems 'to attract a lot of attention through no fault of [his]', leaving readers wondering if there's a subtext, something more to the piece than meets the eye. The collection also includes Baby Talk, in which Mulk Raj Anand visits Jussawalla. Mostly, though, these articles are about the poet himself, the lapsed architect, who imagines the city by the sea one word at a time. The period in which these were written witnessed the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai (1995). Somehow, the difference in what Jussawalla noted about the city and its people is telling of the transformation of the place and of himself too. The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trap: Writings from Bombay is a pleasant read and, as Pinto notes, these pieces are 'a way of giving witness to the bigness and the strangeness of the city.' Adil Jussawalla, he writes, 'does not provide any potted histories; those are for others to write and to believe in. His city is built of chance encounters, of laughing liftmen, of departed friends and other ghosts.' Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.
