Once it was just one game for India, now it's 300 for Savita

BHUBANESWAR: Savita Punia never wanted any of this. All she had planned was to play that one match for the national team just so to make her parents happy. There were no dreams, high ambitions of making it this big, of playing the Olympics, and other lofty stuff.
On Monday, 17 long years later, when she will play her 300th match for India - against the Netherlands at the Kalinga here - she would be grinning through her goalkeeper's grille at the irony, if not the absurdity of it all. She'll become only the second Indian woman to achieve this rare feat after Vandana Katariya, the India and Railways mainstay.
For Savita, however, international match No. 300 might not have happened at all had coach Harendra Singh not persuaded her to stay on after the team failed to make it to the Paris Olympics last year. Failure to make the Summer Games was understandably one of the lowest moments of Savita's storied career.
The India goalkeeper also went through a tough time after India's debacle at the 2016 Rio Olympics where the team finished last with just one point in the kitty, and she was singled out for the failure. "It was 99% certain that I wasn't going to be called for the national camp," recalled Savita on the eve of her landmark game.
Although she kept her place, it wasn't a great experience. To make matters worse, she even suffered a fracture and was out of action for a while. But in her words, Savita had a "rebirth", once Sjoerd Marijne took over. Savita started enjoying the game and didn't look back.
In the years thereafter, she played a pivotal role in helping the team win multiple titles and then qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.
In Tokyo, as the Indian women created history making it to the semifinals by beating Australia in the quarterfinals, Savita had one of the best games of her career. She saved eight PCs that day and as Marijne had said, "She was the wall of India."
Since that high, it's been a roller coaster time with India eventually not making it to Paris but even that's nothing compared to the struggles she faced in her early years.
In the winter of 2008, Savita was returning to Hisar from a trial for the senior nationals in Kurukshetra. Sadly, the bus she had taken broke down and she was stranded near Kaithal.
Although she was expecting to reach Hisar by 5 pm, where her father was waiting, she was stuck more than 100 km away with her goalkeeping kit till 8.30 pm because all the buses that followed had no room.
"Finally, a bus arrived and when I told the conductor that I needed to get home he said, 'Yes, you can but you will have to put your kit on the roof of the bus.' I requested him to ask someone to do it," Savita recalled.
But what the conductor then said sent a chill down her spine, almost making her break down. "Why don't you say? You are a girl, if you ask one of them, ten men will come forward to help you," the conductor eerily told her.
Eventually, Savita didn't board that bus, and thanks to the help of an elderly lecturer, got on the next one and reached Hisar at way past 10 pm. Her father was in a state of despair by then, but that day he decided to get a better second-hand car than their existing one - and a mobile phone - for his daughter.
While it ended her traveling ordeals, the financial struggles continued. More disheartening was that despite being in the squad since 2008, she wasn't getting a chance to play.
"Even when I finally got a chance in 2011 against China, I started getting calls from everywhere telling me that I have to perform or else I won't be in the team from the next tournament," remembered Savita.
It was in 2013 that she was finally designated as the first goalkeeper and repaid the faith with a performance of a lifetime, in the win against Japan in the World League semifinals in 2015. That win paved the way for India to Rio.
However, all this might not have been possible had it not been for her grandfather Ranjit Singh Punia, who first planted the seed of hockey in her. Even her father Mahender Punia was a huge motivation for Savita to play the sport.
"He said he was as happy as when his children were born," Savita remarked as she recalled how happy Mahender was when she was first selected for the national team in 2008.
Even then she told herself that it would be just one game. But all that changed after she saw what it meant for her grandfather. "He had the news clipping of me making it to the squad. He couldn't read it then, but he promised that he would learn to read and then read it by himself," she added.
Those words were enough to light a fire inside Savita. Seventeen years later, it's still burning.