60 Years of Passion: How GE Sridharan Built Indian Volleyball From Scratch

GE Sridharan is 72 now, and his life has narrowed to a single, urgent wish: India at the Olympics. It is the distillation of sixty years spent building a sport from nothing—first as a player, then as an architect of systems, pathways, and dreams for others.

He was not supposed to play volleyball at all. In 1960s Hyderabad, he wanted cricket. There was a ground near his house where Mohammad Azharuddin played, and Sridharan played with them. His father, a military man, thought cricket was too soft. "You have to go and play some tough game," the father said. So in 1964, the boy showed up for volleyball trials. The coach cut him immediately. "You are very small," the coach said. "You don't have the fitness." Three days later, a district education officer saw him practicing near home and ordered the coach to reconsider. Sridharan was taken on. That small intervention changed everything.

What sustained him through those early years was his mother. "If children want to become sportspersons, their mother needs to be interested," he says now. His mother was interested. She brought him to the ground. She told him he would play. From three to seven in the evening, every day, Sridharan was on the volleyball court. Everybody knew it. Sixty years later, he still is.

Education fell away. After his Class 10 exam in 1970, frustrated and lost, he walked toward the Musi river with all his bags and fell in, convinced his schooling was finished. He came back later when he learned everyone had failed, rewrote the exam, passed, but by then volleyball had him completely. He worked as a coolie, earning three rupees a day. His only ambition was to become a good volleyball player. In 1970, a telegram arrived from Ramana Rao, a figure Sridharan calls a legend of Indian volleyball. The message: come to Chennai immediately. Sridharan had ten rupees. The ticket cost nineteen. Two friends gave him the difference. He arrived with one suitcase and nothing to eat.

In Chennai, he played for the State Bank of India team alongside some of the country's best. His career took him through banks, railways, Tata, and eventually to Italy. It was Jimmy George, ranked among the world's top ten players, who opened that door in 1982. During an Asian Championship camp in Patiala, Sridharan received a telegram: "Reach Rome immediately." He did not even know where Rome was. He went anyway. On the first day he and George played together, a contract was signed. Sridharan spent five years in the Italian league, training and playing every day for eight months at a time. "It was very difficult, a very high standard," he recalls. "Playing the Italian league gave me the experience to reach greater heights."

In 1986, at the Asian Games, India played Japan for bronze. In the changing room before the match, the coach asked how they would do. Sridharan said, "Sir, we will win today." They did. It was India's first medal in volleyball. That same year, he received the Arjuna Award—national recognition for a life of struggle and sacrifice. He flew directly from Italy for the ceremony. "Nobody was there when I was receiving my medal," he remembers, but the honor was quiet and deep.

After retiring in 1990, he became a coach. "Being a coach is not like being a player," he says. "It is a 24-hour job. A coach has to sacrifice the family, satisfy the players, satisfy the federation, satisfy the government." He attended the National Institute of Sports, earned FIVB qualifications, and worked his way up through age-based teams to the senior national squad. His philosophy was simple: pass on what his coaches had taught him. In 2007, the Dronacharya Award recognized his coaching career—a public affirmation of decades spent building players rather than chasing headlines. His wife and son were there when he received it.

His coaching philosophy breaks from tradition. He does not believe in long-distance running. "Six people are on the ground in each team," he says. "There is only a distance of three metres to cover. So why should players go for long-distance running?" Instead, he focuses on reaction, agility, explosive movement. He has added psychology to the classical training framework of physical, technical, and tactical work. Before every session, he asks his players one question: "Are you ready for war?" If not, someone else plays. The lack of exposure, not talent, is India's real problem, he believes. "We have tall boys, strength, agility. The only thing is that we are not getting good exposure." His solution is direct: play twenty to thirty matches against Japan, China, Korea, Iran—not Sri Lanka and Nepal.

He opened an academy for underprivileged children. Everything is free: accommodation, food, education. The only condition is that the program exists for those with nothing else. At 72, Sridharan's dream has compressed to its essence. "India should be in the Olympics," he says. "Whether I am the coach or not, India should be at the Olympics and World Championship. I hope my dream will be fulfilled shortly."