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Healing touch
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Hyderabad-based physio, Sunil Dutt has lent his expertise to many tennis players of the State and made sure it helped them enhance their competency levels at the game, writes ABHIJIT SEN GUPTA.
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PHYSIO POWER: Sunil Dutt treats a player. - Photo: Mohammed Yousuf
PROFESSIONAL TENNIS is lucrative, but very demanding as well. A tennis player's life can be a tough one. Hours and hours of practice go into making each shot perfect. The matches are equally difficult. The challenge comes not only from the opponent but also the vagaries of the weather and conditions on court.
The widespread popularity of the sport and its rapid proliferation to all parts of the world has resulted in the number of tournaments going up by leaps and bounds. Each year new tournaments are added to the calendar. There is rarely a moment of rest for a player who wishes to maintain his or her ranking at a high level. It is constant travelling and playing with very little recuperation for the body and the mind.
This hectic schedule and the numerous tournaments also take their toll and cause early burnouts and injuries both of the minor variety and also major career threatening ones.
The older players are more at risk because their muscles, joints and ligaments would have taken a tremendous strain over the years.
In this respect one cannot help admiring Martina Navratilova who has set new standards in fitness by continuing to play and win even in her mid Forties.
Mostly, a tennis player's injuries occur in the ankle, knee and elbow since these are the joints, which take the maximum strain. But a competent physiotherapist can be of great help to a player in reducing the risks of injuries and exhaustion, and even if they do occur, in containing the damage. Some top players hire the services of personal trainers and dieticians to help them to stay in shape while in some cases a trainer is attached to a team or a group of players.
Thirty one year-old Sunil Dutt is a physio who has been able to provide a lot of benefit for several players from Andhra Pradesh and also some from other States.
Sunil is a well-known face at most sports venues. He used to be a national level handball player and between 1984 and 1997 had represented the State 20 times in junior and senior nationals, south zone championships and Federation Cup tournaments. He was a member of the gold medal winning AP team in the junior nationals in 1990.
His background as a sportsperson helped him to develop a keen understanding of the requirements of various sports, how the human body functions under stress, and how to minimise the risks and damages of injury and treat the same quickly and effectively.
He underwent a course in physiotherapy and also took a lot of guidance from the late Ghousuddin, who in his lifetime had built up a reputation for being the most knowledgeable sports physio in Hyderabad. Sunil later became a personal trainer and physio for several of the State's sportspersons and rendered noteworthy service to them during the National Games in Hyderabad.
For more than five years he has been working in this field and at various times has helped tennis players such as Sania Mirza, Vasudev Reddy, Rushmy Chakravarthy and Manisha Malhotra and also former All England badminton champ P. Gopichand.
Sunil's knowledge of the correct techniques of stretching and relaxing the muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints, enable the player's limbs to stay supple and retain their elasticity thereby reducing the risk of injury.
He is a regular at the Sinnet Tennis Academy in Secunderabad where his services have benefited many.
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Chennai
Hyderabad
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