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Most Valuable Player Awards to Poonam Chaturvedi of Chhattisgarh & Vishesh Bhrighuvanshi of ONGC, Dehradun in Men

Poonam Chaturvedi of Chhattisgarh and Vishesh Bhrighuvanshi of ONGC were chosen as the Most Valuable Player awards here at the 30th Federation Cup Basketball in Goa

Wherever she walked, she made heads turn and necks crane. Standing head and shoulders above the rest at 6 foot 11 inch, Poonam Chaturvedi was easily noticed. And her height helped her move from Kanpur to Chhattisgarh and to Indian women’s basketball team and now she is the tallest woman hoopster in the country.

At the federation cup she scored 227 points and 82 rebounds from 5 matches she played which fetched her the Most valuable Player award along with Vishesh Bhrighuvanshi of ONGC in five games scored 107 points from five matches.

She scored a record 65 points against Maharastra, 57 against Goa then 42 against south east central railway only Kerala bottled her even then in final she scored 33 points and in the league match scored 26 You don’t need to jump if your opponents cannot even reach your chin.she scored all points without jumping Though she was born and brought up in Uttar Pradesh, 18-year-old Poonam represents Chhattisgarh. While her height must have made basketball an easy choice, life has not been a cakewalk for her. Due to a malformed upper lip, she cannot speak properly and suffers frequent headaches.“She has had two operations, she could not even speak when she was a child. There will soon be a third operation,” says Chhattisgarh coach Rajesh Patel.

Talking about her height, Patel stresses on its disadvantages. “She cannot dribble that much as the ball won’t bounce up till her desired level. She will have to bend down to move along with the ball.”

Rajesh Patel was the man who spotted her from the. National Women’s Games in Chhattisgarh (2010). She was 15 that time and was 6 feet 5 inches tall.“Impressed with her height, I brought her to Bhilai Poonam stays along with 20 other players.

“I don’t have any favourite basketball player. Not even from NBA. I just want to be a good player myself,” says Poonam, who started playing the game since 2009 after passing out the tenth standard in school. Since “Nobody bothered in UP she change base to Chhattisgarh So she said I am learning better here.”