Valerio, Varun Matta and Brutal Defeats

Squash used to be one game I thought I was good at. I actually was captain of our hostel squash team in 3rd year and a member in 4th year and we won Bronze both the years. By the way, Bronze reminds me of a pretty pussy performance from Varun Matta against a pretty pussy player called Shirshanka Das. Our whole strategy against a hostel depended on giving 2 games to their best players and winning the remaining three. That would have taken us to the finals where we would have a decent chance. Didn't happen that way courtesy a very bad game from Matta.

Times moved on from those good days of 1999, 2000. My game went completely downhill and I stopped playing altogether. In last three years, I started getting the opportunity to play again and at three crucial times, my game has let me down.. First I lost to a Berkeley guy at C4C tournament in 2006 at Stanford in 15 minutes before my friends in Bay Area could even arrive for cheering. I promised that I would quit smoking, practise hard and build up my stamina for next year. Same result in 2007 but this time I got many more points. I won the first game, was leading 5-2 in the second and ended up losing in three games to another guy from Berkeley. Definitely my hard work was not enough. I should have used some "Maa-Behen ki gaali" against this guy who was also from IIT Delhi and was now doing his MBA from Berkeley. I decided not to despite encouragement from Jasbeer who was cheering me from outside. So I decided to have my sleep( haar ki neend in words of Ashish Bhatia) and forgot about it.

Then came La Chaux-de-fonds and a guy at my client site about whom people told me that he was pretty good. They did not tell me more and I did not shy away from throwing a challenge at him. Soon the information started trickling in. This guy Valerio was a regular in tournaments near French border of Switzerland and was very very good....but the die was cast and I had to play him. The result was again a crushing defeat...9-0, 9-0 in swift 10 minutes even though he definitely was not playing at competitive level to give me some chance.

I guess time to do something about this recurring problem....these nights after defeats are pretty dreary..