Jacob Maliekal: A Kerala push to South Africa’s Olympics dreams

KOCHI: On Thursday morning in Rio, PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal will play their first matches of this Olympic Games. A few hours later, Kidambi Srikanth will also take the court in a day of high hopes for Indian badminton. Sandwiched between these matches is another contest which also has an Indian flavour. When South Africa’s Jacob Maliekal plays Son Wan Ho of South Korea, at least a few hearts in Kerala will be pounding.Jacob is a second generation Indian, born to Kerala couple Antony Maliekal and Annie Periappuram, educationists settled in East London, South Africa. The 25-year-old is South Africa’s number one shuttler and he qualified for the Rio Olympics in May this year with a world ranking of 78 (He’s No.77 according to the latest rankings) and as the African continent’s highest ranked shuttler.Jacob has been in the Olympic Village for well over a week now getting ready for probably the biggest game in his career so far, against a superior opponent (Wan Ho is ranked 8th in the world). But he likes to take it easy. “I prefer to approach it in a relaxed manner and treat it as any other game,” Jacob told TOI over phone from Rio.While many are complaining about the facilities in the Olympic Village, Jacob is relishing his time there. “The athletes are really well taken care of here and the greatest thing about the Village is that you get to meet athletes from all over the world and that is something fantastic,” says Jacob.Jacob visits his ancestral homes in Pala and Ettumanoor in Kerala once in a few years and has fond memories of vacations spent here. “We used to play cricket with the bat made out of coconut palm leaf and go swimming in the nearby river,” says Jacob when asked to recall his Kerala memories.As is the case with many South African kids, cricket was young Jacob’s first love. He captained his school team and even played with the likes of Wayne Parnell and Rilee Rossouw in provincial matches. “I used to go and play badminton with my parents during weekends but it was only around 2005-06 that I started playing it seriously,” he says.Though he was a late bloomer, Jacob took swift strides and bagged gold in the All-Africa Junior Championships in 2007. In 2009, he got selected for South Africa’s senior squad and soon he decided to leave for Asia, a move that laid the foundations of his rise.“In South Africa, the knowledge about badminton is very limited and I felt I needed to go either to Europe or Asia to get more professional training.” He joined the Kawasaki international badminton Club in 2010 and started doing a bachelor’s degree in business and commerce in Malaysia.He missed out on a berth for London Olympics but kept at his Olympic dream under the guidance of Chinese coach Li Mao and shifted his base to Shenzhen, China last year. Now having achieved his Rio goal, Jacob is hoping to punch above his weight and create a flutter on the badminton courts of Rio.