armed with two boiled eggs and half a litre of milk before sunrise each day sixfootone postgraduate commerce student pranav pomane sets out from sataras gokhali village to baramatis tuljaram chaturchand college to play a game that has tamed his formerwrestler attitude and sanitised his rogue basketballplayer tonguecoarse words and gestures that dribble off the 22yearold sportsman mindlessly on other maidans stay consciously filtered in the levelplaying grounds of korfball a unisex dutch sport requiring an equal number of girls and boys on each team which recently saw pomane fastening a seatbelt for the first timeafter a gap of 11 years in november 2022 india participated and stood fifth in the asiaoceania korfball championship aokc in pattaya renewing its international tryst with the mixedgender sport which was invented by a dutch school teacher in 1902korf is dutch for basket from a distance korfball looks like the highstrung love child of basketball and netball though its 115foot high basket stands 18 inches taller than that of the two played between teams of eight comprising four boys and four girls the mixedgender contact sport was seen as revolutionary in 1980 india when the country became the first in asia to join the international korfball federation ikfas a contender in every world korfball championship since 1987 india figured among the top 15 nations in the ballgame and had there been a european coach by their side ikf president jan fransoo believes india wouldve even made the global top 10 if not the world games but then in november 2015 extensive governance problems at the korfball federation of india kfi led to its suspension it was only last april following extensive reforms at kfi whose new heart is pumped by active korfball athletes such as haryanas dev balhara that the suspension was lifted and a gentle dutch retiree named atte van haastrecht descended on punjabfor three months leading up to aokc inside the courts of colleges in jalandhar solan and rohtakhaastrecht a former korfball champion trained rustic young players from rajasthan himachal pradesh maharashtra and kerala in the nitty gritty of the sport that involves dunking a footballlike ball into a 115foot backboardless moulded fibre ring without dribbling since theres no backboard its harder to score as the ball tends to rebound more says baramatibased physical education trainer gautam jadhav whose studentspomane and ahmednagars dishan gandhimade it to the 14member national squad for aokc a selftaught korfball teacher jadhav had fashioned a ring out of a strip of iron in 2016 when he introduced the mixedgender sport to his basketball and netball studentsfearing the rustic gaze jadhav initially trained boys and girls in separate groups later some girls dropped out following collisionsboth literal and metaphoricalwith the boys youre like brothers and sisters jadhav would tell the kids even as approval of some parents had to be sought through reminders of the increased odds at winning a medal and a government job through the embrace of the relatively new sporttoday with places like