From a Broken Bat to a Sports Goods Store

Niteen L Shah, MD, Total Sports & Fitness, shares his journey of how he turned his dream into reality.

As a child, I was meek and an extreme introvert. The few friends I had during my early growing years were limited to those staying in the same building as me. Though I excelled in academics, what I most desired was to shine in sports.

I grew up in a beautiful, green area located in the heart of Mumbai. It had a very strong ‘sporting culture’ and there were always groups of kids out in the streets playing games like cricket, football and badminton. My burning desire to play cricket got me to muster the courage to walk across the street one day and ask the boys from the neighbourhood if I could join their club – a tall feat for a shy boy like me. They accepted me and that’s when I first started playing gully cricket.

One summer, I wanted to join a cricket coaching camp. I somehow convinced my mother to pay the fees, but there was one more problem – I had no equipment. After asking around, I borrowed a bat from a friend but as luck would have it, on day three of the camp, the bat broke and I couldn’t buy a new one. That was the end of my formal training in cricket. Yet, even though my bat was broken, my spirit was not.

When I turned 16, I was expected to spend all my spare hours working in the family shop that my father had established. However, every day, at 5 pm, I would run away from the store to do what I loved most – play cricket.