From Rajasthan Warriors to Railways: For Buchannagari Raju, Ultimate Kho Kho League has been a lifechanger

Bucking the trend of many from his village moving to Dubai as the destination for jobs, Raju preferred to play kho kho, often borrowing money from his friends and relatives.

B. Raju (yellow jersey right), son of a farmer’s family from Karimnagar (Telangana), who represented Rajasthan Warriors in the Ultimate Kho Kho League. | Photo Credit: UKK

Rajasthan Warriors may have been winless in the Ultimate Kho Kho League. But, for Buchannagari Raju, son of a farmer from a relatively obscure village Vempet in the Karimnagar district of Telangana, it has been a truly memorable journey in the world of sports as he proved a point or two defying all odds coming from a farmer’s family.

For someone who started the sport at the age of 12 at the Zilla Parishad School and continued his passion for the sport despite the touch of sarcasm, his friends used to throw at him “for playing a sport which they felt had no future’.

Interestingly many of those who were with him at the start left the sport but Raju was unrelenting and kept working hard to earn a place for the State in the Sub-junior nationals and then in the Senior nationals in 2016 - a stint which made the critics take note of his impressive show and which also fetched him a job in the South Central Railway at the age of 19.

Now, Raju, a Grade I post holder in the Mechanical Department of Railways, has every reason to look back with a sense of pride as many young kids have started playing kho kho again in his village.

Bucking the trend of many from his village moving to Dubai as the destination for jobs, Raju preferred to play kho kho, often borrowing money from his friends and relatives. And soon, he had every reason to feel proud playing a key role in Railways winning the Senior Nationals.

“My job coupled with the UKK League changed the perspective of a lot of people, and now many are motivated to look at the sport with a lot of hope,” Raju said.

“The sport actually changed my life, enabling me to provide the financial stability which I needed. I am the only person who took up sports in my family, and now that I am also playing in the Ultimate Kho Kho,” he said. “In my village, now all of them watch me in action on TV,” he added.

“Well, I have even got done with all the necessary visa formalities, but my seniors convinced me to stay back and continue with sport, and now looking back, I have no regrets about this decision,” Raju said.

What went wrong for Rajasthan Warriors in the ongoing edition?

“The first setback happened during the pre-season training camp in Bhubaneshwar, with an injury to Jagannath Murmu, one of the strongest players in the team. He was our main wazir and all-rounder, a key player for our team who got injured just two days before the league started,” he said. “Again, another senior player, Akshay Gunpule, also got injured during the league stage which also impacted the team’s performance. I feel things would have been totally different with them in the team,” he said.

“Ultimate Kho Kho has elevated our game to the next level. We have professional coaches here who constantly take care of our fitness, diet and skills. We have worked very hard on our strength and endurance, and as a result, there have been fewer injuries in UKK this time,” Raju explained.

“I would love to see more players embrace the sport of Kho Kho. In Telangana, there is a need for more mats, academies and clubs where we can practice regularly and hone our skills. There is a lot of talent and having better infrastructure will only help the sport grow,” he said.

“Yes, the game has totally changed now especially after Ultimate kho kho has started. There is more focus on strength, speed, endurance and tactics as compared to before. The demands of the mat are more as compared to mud because the latter has natural gravitational assistance, unlike mud. We have realized the need to train in a proper structure and work on our lower body strength too, as that plays a massive role in the sport now,” Raju said.

“Participating in the 2019 South Asian Games in Kathmandu, Nepal was a significant personal achievement, and I want to continue playing kho kho and represent India at the top level. I also want to win Ultimate Kho Kho once in my life. The future of the sport looks really bright now, especially with the advent of UKK,” he signed off.