Swami Nateshananda Saraswati: A sanyasi who is part of Indian basketball’s Olympic history

His parents named him after legendary cricketer Lala Amarnath, and Amarnath Nagarajan was a good batter and a smart off-spinner 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 at 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 Sportstar 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.

“We played in the 60,000-capacity stadium, it was like playing at the Eden Garden but indoors… just imagine how it will be. Whether you look at the size, speed or skills, we were not a match for any of the teams. We knew what the result would be, we took it as a golden opportunity,” said the 70-year-old.

“And almost every player in the USSR and other teams had played 200 major international matches. We had played less than 20 when we started in Moscow. India finished last in the 12-team event, without a win.”

It has been 44 years since India played in the Olympics. Is he surprised that the country has still not got back to the big stage?

“No,” said Amarnath. “The Olympics is for the top 12. Back then our world ranking was above 50, now we are 82. How can it be a surprise. They are making a lot of plans to improve but unless an individual player matches the opponent’s individual player, you cannot make any progress.”

Ten years ago, Amarnath retired as assistant general manager from the State Bank of India and in 2019, almost a year after his wife’s death, he became a sanyasi after reading many religious books.

“Slowly, I began seeing things in the right perspective. But a basketballer’s life is more disciplined than a sanyasi’s. The toughest, however, is the banker’s life.”