The return to Squash

I started playing squash on a whim during the first semester of my third year at BITS. I sucked real bad in the beginning - hit the ball too hard, didn't have any idea of where to place the ball - what I had working for me though was my agility and speed around the court. I was adept at racquet sports but was never good enough to be on a team; I'll rephrase that - I didn't persevere enough to get onto the table tennis team and was never that good at tennis.

I began to notice improvements in my game within the first couple of weeks that I played and that's what kept me going. It's what has kept me going to this day; there is a discernible improvement in my game as I play more. What I didn't take into consideration was the fact that being as competitive as I am, I'd push my body to extract that last bit of juice for a point, a game, a match. As someone said, most times when I lost, I never gave it up easily...

The inevitable happened - I pushed my body too far this past year. I've had my share of squash inflicted injuries: Raghupatruni's forehand return nearly took out my left eye in the first month I started playing, I tweaked my back, got tendinitis in my right bicep and right knee's ACL but I stayed number 1 for six months - now that's gotta be worth something, right? Wrong - nothing's worth killing your body over and I'll never repeat the mistake again. Will I start playing squash again? Yes - this week's the first time I'll step on the court since the last week of June and actually work my way around the court. My movements will definitely be ginger, the ball will fly out of the court, I won't reach many shots but I'll be on the court. I can't wait...