<
        >

          As Indian volleyball meets Italian, remembering the GOAT: Jimmy George

          Getty Images
          • Anirudh Menon
          Dec 8, 2023, 03:10 AM

          On Friday when India's best volleyball club take on the current world champions - Ahmedabad Defenders vs Sir Sicoma Perugia of Italy - in the FIVB Men's Club World Championships in Bengaluru, it will rekindle a relationship that goes back several decades, and a story that is unique to Indian sport: The story of Jimmy George. 40 years ago, he achieved what no other Indian athlete in any sport had managed, nor has managed since.

          ****

          Deep in the northern Italian province of Brescia, in a small town called Montichiari, is a multi-purpose indoor stadium that hosts basketball and volleyball matches, including those of the volleyball club from Monza (best known for hosting Formula 1 Grand Prix races), Pallavolo Gabecca. That club competes in the Italian volleyball league, widely regarded as the best in the world. The name of the stadium? The locals call it PalaGeorge. Its full, official name? Palazzetto Jimmy George.

          For a town in north Italy to name a stadium after someone from north Kerala, that person must have been quite special; and Jimmy George was special.

          Before his tragic death in a road accident aged 32, he took Indian volleyball to heights unheard of (and untouched since). If the Indian players of today consider competing with the best in the world "beyond their dreams," George lived it.

          Imagine a Sunil Chhetri not just playing in the Premier League at his absolute prime but starring in it. This achievement was on that scale, if not bigger, considering the absolute lack of exposure at the time. Schooled entirely in Kerala, George was a volleyball natural who went from (in global volleyball terms) the middle of nowhere to the world's biggest stage. It's an unfathomable leap for most Indian sports, to this day.

          He was a Kerala state player at 16, captain of that team at 19 years old. By 21, he was an Arjuna Award winner. He dropped out of medical school to become a professional and was soon declared the best player in the Persian Gulf when he played at Abu Dhabi Sports Club. By the time he turned 27, he had become the first Indian to move to a top European league - and he had gone to the top European league, in Italy. He was also leader of the Indian team that won bronze in the Asian Games.

          Those are the facts, the numbers, the tangible bits that history records. What it doesn't really do is explain how in his prime he was, without exaggeration, one of the best players in the world.

          It was in his prime, though, in Italy, that he died in a car accident in 1987. So popular was he in those parts, so good at what he did, that when the province he played most of his volleyball in opened a new stadium in 1993, it was decided they'd name it after him.

          #TriviaThursday: Who was the very first Indian ���� volleyball player to become a professional and played club volleyball in Italy ����?

          In an interview, his father, George Joseph, recollected that his daughter-in-law used to say that they wouldn't ever accept money from Jimmy at petrol bunks: an autograph would suffice. He says they used to call his son Hermes - for surely he must have had wings on his feet. If you are inclined to see this is as the hyperbolic, loving memory of a grieving father, sample this from the letter the then mayor of Montichiari wrote when christening the stadium:

          "Jimmy George has left his high human values and morals not only in the world of sports, but also in our whole community, especially among the youth... Therefore, on this occasion, I would like to express ... our feeling of appraisal and gratitude to the noble Indian people who has offered us, in the figure of Jimmy George, a shining and solid example of high universal values."

          All that exists now of Jimmy-George-in-action is the recollections of those who saw him play, and grainy YouTube footage. But even in the latter you can make out the genius of the balding, bearded, rather short-looking (he was 6' 1") man who found more hangtime when leaping for his spikes than anyone else on court: that extra split-second in the air making him especially difficult to block.

          So, as we celebrate Ashwal Rai and Angamuthu and Ukkrapandian going about their business against the best volleyball players in the world, let us remember the man who had been doing much the same decades ago, the man who allowed Indian volleyball to dream. The greatest of them all: Jimmy George.