CHENNAI: As he walks away from the court, B Shrinivas Rao scans the area where the seating arrangements have been provided for visiting dignitaries. As soon as he spots an empty chair, his pace quickens. For Rao and his fellow referees at the 18th Senior National Beach Volleyball Championships, chances to just sit still and relax don’t come too often.
Picture this. On Monday, matches were played from early morning till evening across four courts at the Besant Nagar beach here, in both men’s and women’s sections. Every beach volley game needs at least three match officials — two referees and a scorer (also a referee). Ideally there should be an assistant scorer as well. There are a total of fifteen referees at the national championships. This essentially means that all fifteen of them were continuously officiating from daybreak to dusk, taking breaks only to eat! It was only when the pace slowed down a bit in the evening with two courts hosting matches, that most referees got a bit of a break. But even then, they were officiating alternate games, with the action going on well into midnight on Day 1 of the three-day event.
And what do they gain from this? “Almost nothing,” says Rao, a railways employee. “We get a travel allowance to reach the venue and a daily allowance of a few hundred rupees. Referees in Indian volleyball, especially beach volley do it only for the love of the game.”
Beach volleyball has flourished across the globe — it has been the best-attended event outside of track and field at every Olympics since Athens 2004. But in India, it still remains indoor volleyball’s pauper cousin. As such, it borrows almost everything from indoor volleyball — administrators, players, referees. Like most of the players, the referees at the event too have been loaned from the indoor version. The tournament’s referees committee head Srinivasan though is different. He is perhaps India’s only exclusive beach volley referee, having officiated at a number of international events, including the Incheon Asian Games men’s final.
Even though his role is meant to be supervisory here, the shortage of referees has meant that he has been filling in at the matches. “It’s not like this in other countries,” he says. “I talk to all the referees I meet about what it is like for them. In most countries, they are graded according to their performances and receive a salary as per their grade. And once you graduate onto the international stage, it’s much more financially lucrative. For an Asian event, you get an allowance of $80 a day, while for a World event, you get $120 per day.”
Yet Srinivasan, who will likely be officiating at the Asian Games and stands a chance of being called for the Tokyo Olympics, does not see anyone else from India following him to the world stage anytime soon. “There is simply no incentive,” he says. “When I was starting out, I was spending from my own pocket to go and officiate in countries like Thailand. Not many people can and will do that.”
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com