Singhs can be queens too!

There’s an uncanny semblance in the way they walk, jog, dribble or even shoot. A glance at them will tell you they are sisters. Hang on. A bystander says there is a third one too. “Her name is Divya. She, too, captained India.” Wow, what a legacy!

Further probe into the matter reveals that Prashanti and Akanksha have not one but three sisters. And yes, all play basketball. In fact, four of the five ‘Singh Sisters’ have represented the tricolour.

Two of them already know what it takes to lead the country and the other two hope to be captains sometime in the future! This, unarguably, is the ‘basketball family of India’ and hails from Varanasi.

Prashanti led the Power Girls in the inaugural Pro League and had Akanksha for company. Pratima, the youngest of the lot, played for Wonder Girls. “Priyanka, our eldest sister, started playing first and we just followed in her footsteps,” says 26-year-old Prashanti, who led the Indian team to a silver medal at the Asian Indoor Games in Vietnam last year. This, arguably, is the biggest achievement in a modest Indian basketball history.

“We lost the final by just one point. But a silver medal is a silver medal,” she said.  When one sister talks, can the other keep quiet? Akanksha, 22, is easily the chirpier of the two — both on court and otherwise — who quickly relived the past. “Our father, an IIT Kharagpur product, wanted us to become IAS officers but all of us became basketball players,” she giggles.

“It’s not that he is against it. He just told us to study well. Do you know Boskey (Prashanti) was a topper right from LKG to Std XII? She got 70 per cent in the UP board exams. That’s like 90 per cent in CBSE,” she said. What about her marks? “Oh! Me? In fact, I was a better student…,” she reasoned before ‘Boskey’ interrupts to set the record straight.

For the record, Priyanka, 30, the eldest among the Hum Paanch is an NIS certified basketball coach who is married and settled in Thailand. No.2 Divya, who led India at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, is now pursuing a degree in sports management in the US. Prashanti, Akanksha and Pratima — in that order —make up the quintet. The sisters have a brother too. Vikrant is the youngest and he (sadly) plays football!

Prashanti is employed with MTNL and also has offers from foreign clubs. She, however, has one grudge. “The women’s team has done much better than the men at the international level. But you know I am just a Class III officer. All the guys get a Class I posting. It’s so unfair.”

Prashanti also recalled her meeting with Sachin Tendulkar in the elevator of a SoBo hotel. She was at the Trident for a sports convention and it so happened that Mumbai Indians were put up there. “He was so nice and humble,” she said.

Last but not the least, Urmila Singh — the proud mother of five — may have been a teacher by profession but she did all she could to mentor the girls.