Football fever for India`s only female coach

Kolkata, Dec 11: Not only can Anita Sarkar bend it like David Beckham, she's coaching an all-male football team in Kolkata to do the same. Sarkar, who is in her 40s, is the only woman coach registered with the Indian Football Association. She started playing football in clubs in 1975, representing the state of West Bengal in various tournaments, before turning coach in 1996. "My aim is to produce excellent players for the country," said Sarkar who lives and breathes football and who was trained in coaching at England's renowned Football Association. In addition to coaching the Mirzapur Union Club, Sarkar recently set up a football camp in Kolkata to train up to 50 boys to play the beautiful game. Many Indians have compared Sarkar's story to hit Bollywood movie 'Chak De India', which features superstar Shahrukh Khan as the coach of a women's hockey team. When asked what it's like for a woman to train men in a sport long considered a male bastion, Sarkar resignedly rolls her eyes before answering one of the questions she dislikes the most. "My motive is to cultivate the best playing skills in these boys. I make sure my boys know all the techniques so that they become successful players," she told reporters. For Sarkar's trainees, the fact that she's a woman pales before her ball skills and practical approach. "She knows all the technicalities of the game. There's nothing that she is unaware of. It's better than training at any big club. She tells us our mistakes. Even if we ask her 10 times, she answers," says Tanveer Hassan Khan, a football trainee. Women in urban India largely enjoy equal opportunities although their counterparts in the countryside are known to face traditional gender discrimination and harassment in what has been a patriarchal society for centuries. Indian women have also done well in sports such as field hockey, shooting, athletics, tennis, badminton, weightlifting and boxing although few have gained the same kind of global recognition as some of their Western counterparts. Bureau Report