There’s a sense of inevitability when Harshitha Bopaiah picks up the basketball for her sixth free throw in the Division B final of the FIBA Under-18 Women’s Asian Championships. Her body language doesn’t attempt to mask with fake nonchalance the pressure within. Her face doesn’t give false looks of insouciance. She’s focused.
Kazakhstan’s an easy opponent on paper as they lost two of their three group games and only won against Samoa. But they are in the final after beating Syria.
This is Harshitha’s first final of any tournament as an India player. She’s performing in front of her family and friends at Sree Kanteerava Stadium and the home crowd has not stopped cheering. There’s tension which you can see on her face. But all her five previous free throws of the night – and two in the semi-final – were executed to smooth perfection. Hence, the sense of inevitability.
Harshitha picks up the ball, pauses for a fleeting moment, breathes twice and, once again, makes the perfect parabola that earns her team an additional point. Six free throws out of six.
The point stretched India’s lead in the third quarter to 47-24 in the third quarter. They eased to a 68-45 win over the Kazakhs to earn a berth in Division A of the Championships in 2020.
Harshitha, who’ll turn 20 by then, won’t be there to play that tournament. It’s been just three years since started playing basketball. But she reluctantly admits to having bigger ambitions.
“I would like to play for the Indian senior team, and perhaps, play abroad as well,” she tells Scroll.in.
But she barely had those ambitions when she began hooping back in Coorg.
The 18-year-old was encouraged to participate in various sports as a kid as sports ran in her family but of a different kind. Her dad played hockey for the state team and her brother represented his University side.
However, Harshitha excelled in athletics – long jump and high jump – at school.
“I’d come for a selection trials for athletics. A coach there told me that I have the height (now 5’9) for basketball. So, I went for the selection… and, got into the team.”
As a 15-year-old she joined the sports hostel in Vijaya Nagar for further training. Initially, she would face challenges on the court having never trained in the game before. But with time she adjusted.
“But I enjoy playing the game a lot,” she says.
The Indian team was without the injured teenage sensation Vaishnavi Yadav, who scored 71 points in a Junior Nationals Game in Ludhiana. But in her absence, Harshitha stood out, scoring 75 points in five games to finish the tournament as India’s leading scorer.
Putting the ball in the basket, of course, is fun for Harshitha. But she finds greater relish whilst defending – blocking and stealing the ball from the opposition (she made four steals in the final against Kazakhstan).
But Harshitha never imagined herself playing in front of her home crowd in the Indian jersey. Atleast not so early in her career.
“I never thought I’d make the side. I gave my best in the national camp. And, when I got into the team, it was a little scary because I knew I would be playing in front of my home crowd. But, two-three matches later, I got encouragement from the crowd, the coach. I felt proud of myself that I ended up as my team’s leading scorer in the tournament,” she said.
Certainly, India coach Zoran Visic was proud of her. He is incharge of India’s three teams – U-16, U-18 and the senior – in Bengaluru. But he was more than impressed with her consistent performance.
“Harshitha was very good, on both the rebounds as well as scoring points for us. In the semi-finals, too, she got a double-double, almost triple-double. And, she’s an important member of this team,” Visic said.
Both Harshitha and Visic would hope that she can be an important member of the senior team as well.