Amarnath — a sanyasi who is part of Indian basketball’s Olympic history

Amarnath Nagarajan, former Indian basketball captain, reflects on his Olympic experience and transition to sanyasi life.

His parents named him after legendary cricketer Lala Amarnath and Amarnath Nagarajan was a good batter and a smart offspinner in school. The youngster, from Periyakulam in Tamil Nadu’s Theni District, was adept in hockey and athletics too.

But once he took up basketball, at 16, all the other sports took a back seat. And like Lala, a former Indian captain, Amarnath also went on to lead the country in basketball. He was also a part of the historic Indian team that played the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the only time an Indian basketball team featured in the Summer Games.

“We got the chance to play in Moscow very unexpectedly. Though India finished fifth in the 1979 Asia Cup, the Olympic qualification event, four teams that finished ahead of us joined the US-led boycott of the Olympics and suddenly, we had qualified for Moscow. We knew we were nowhere near the other teams, but we enjoyed the experience,” said Amarnath, the Indian captain at the 1982 Asian Games, in a chat with The Hindu at the Regional Sports Centre here on Saturday evening.

Now a Coimbatore-based sanyasi who goes by the name Swami Nateshananda Saraswati, Amarnath was the chief guest for Team Rebound’s basketball players’ reunion here.

Expectedly, India lost all its seven matches – including three in the group phase – in the Olympics but Amarnath played against some legends in Moscow. There was Brazil’s Oscar Schmidt, the leading scorer in Olympic history with more than 1000 points, and USSR’s Sergey Belov who won four Olympic medals and lit the Flame in Moscow.

“Oscar was about our height (6’2) but he was shooting like anything,” said Amarnath. “And at the Games, the players were all very friendly.”

Despite making their Olympic debut, Amarnath revealed that the big stage did not shock the Indians or make them nervous.