An employee slides a condom on the hook and (above) hockey sticks with condoms kept to dry. Pictures by Gajinder Singh

Jalandhar, Sept. 3: Condoms can actually make you more prolific — provided the game you are playing is hockey.

If you have trouble believing this, take a close look the next time Dilip Tirkey dribbles past half a dozen players and scores a field goal.

His stick will have been manufactured using a condom at its tip, making it stronger — and shinier — than ever before.

Jalandhar-based R.K. Sports, which makes the popular Rakshak brand of hockey sticks, has evolved the new technique to make the product smoother and stronger.

The results are believed to be so good that sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar may well be tempted to join women and child development minister Renuka Chowdhury in singing paeans to the condom.

“The idea of using condoms to make the lower part, the hook, came to me more than five years ago after a large number of hockey sticks began getting damaged,” said Sanjay Kohli, R.K. Sports’ managing director.

The hook is the most important part of the stick as it is used to strike the ball. Seven pieces of mulberry wood are bound together, boiled, dried, glued and bent on a machine to make the hook. It then goes through several processes, including sawing and polishing, before the handle is added to it.

“Earlier, a plastic net used to be pasted on the front surface of the hook to prevent it splitting after a few games. But once the net came out, the stick could not be repaired,” Kohli said.

Many sticks had to be discarded at the manufacturing stage because the net would not dry properly or would fail to grip the hook.

Such sticks could not be sold and were used in the factory’s furnace.

“It was causing me nightmares, because I couldn’t keep pace with the orders,” Kohli said.

So, he began experimenting. “One day I bought a box of condoms and the result was tremendous,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. The condom gripped the wood much better than the nets ever did.

Despite the good results, Kohli, who personally supervises the condom part of the manufacture, was initially hesitant to use them for large-scale production. He felt embarrassed.

“Condoms are meant for something else and it sounded absurd and even embarrassing to use them in the manufacture of sports goods,” he said. “But I had to take a decision quickly, for a lot of expensive mulberry wood was going waste. It’s been a wise decision.”

There were unforeseen problems, too. For instance, the shopkeeper from whom he bought the condoms became suspicious, thinking a brothel had opened in the neighbourhood.

“One of my employees used to go to the shop daily to buy the condoms. One day he came running back to tell me the shopkeeper had demanded to be told what he was doing with the condoms,” Kohli said.

“The shopkeeper refused to believe my explanation till I showed him how it was done.”

This correspondent was shown the entire manufacturing process involving the condom, but Kohli requested that the technique be kept a secret till he obtained a patent.

Punjab is the largest producer of hockey sticks and Rakshak one of the best-known brands.

Kohli’s family has been in the sports goods business for decades. The other brands the family owns include Vampire and BDM.