Will Cricket ever be replaced in India?

WARNING: Cricket lovers may or may not be offended while reading this article. Sachin lovers may hurt their necks while nodding their heads excessively. And basketball lovers in India are going to shoot themselves in their feet out of exasperation.

Right now, it is hard to escape the Cricket hysteria in India. From the time of writing this, the first ball of the Cricket World Cup Final, held between India and Sri Lanka in Mumbai, is only about 22 hours away. But the country is already in fever pitch. In the last few weeks, the media has had a field day with India's and its testing games, against three-times champions and Bond-villains Australia and our neighbours/enemies/rivals/little brothers Pakistan, a game that had 1.4 billion people watching it worldwide.

Now we're in the Final, and I feel that about 90% of the newspaper stories, TV tickers, SMS messages, water-cooler discussions, Facebook Status-updates, and Twitter hashtags from India are cricket-related. The craziness has from Numerologically enlightened astrologers giving advice to our players to attention-seeking pin-up Models offering our 'Boys in Blue' a red-blooded strip-tease; with each win, more and more Indians have gotten involved. The Pakistan game on Wednesday was a half working day to most, including the government. Few work on Saturday, but there will be even fewer outdoors during the cricketing hours. Every relevant leader, celebrity, and sporting hero has had their say.

It might not be a stretch to call this the most hyped sporting event in India, at least in my lifetime. And it was funny, because when the World Cup began a month and a half ago, the lack of interest was startling. There were too many meaningless games, India's contests were stretched out too far from each other, and even the promotion on the billboards/TV channels seemed hollow.

Back then (it seems a lifetime ago), it was surprisingly shocking to me that India is hosting the biggest tournament of its favourite game, and India was playing as favourites, and yet, the hype was missing. I compared it to the FIFA World Cup, a football competition held in another country, and a sport that is, at best, second in India, and India were far from even getting a sniff at the top 32 nations that participated - and yet, the reception to the Football World Cup here seemed crazier.

I take all that back now. I have been alive for about 26 and a half years, and India has been feeding on a cricket frenzy for about 28, ever since Kapil Dev hoisted our last (and only) World Cup Trophy at Lords, England, in 1983. India's greatest ever, and perhaps the world's greatest ever, Sachin Tendulkar made his debut in 1989 - I was five, and it was around the same time I made my own cricket-watching debut. Tendulkar, and through him, the game of cricket, became my first love.

But as time has passed, that love has diminished substantially. Tendulkar is still my first love, but I'm committed to my soulmate now, the game of basketball. Which is perhaps why, even though I spend night and day in pursuit of hoops-enlightenment, I still get a soft spot every time Sachin heads out to play. I only watch cricket if India is playing, and I doubt very much if I will be able to have any interest once Sachin retires. It would make it a fitting full circle of my affair with cricket, started and finished by the same man.

Because Cricket itself - and I'm sorry to say this my bat-and-ball fanatic friends - is a fairly lame sport. The games go on for five days (Test) or nine hours (ODIs). Even the 'shortest' form is three hours long, and it is considered to be the game's most meaningless form. Cricket has become disgustingly embroiled with big money bets and fixing, making fans suspicious of almost anything aberrational that occurs in the game. Athletically, cricket players are a joke when compared to the top class individuals in other sports that require some form of running. And its a game played competitively amongst about 10 teams in the world, with five or six others flirting with the big boys and (mostly) getting a whooping. Yes, India is the best in the world, but we need to curb our enthusiasm in being the best at something that, frankly, most countries don't really give a shit about.

Plus, the game has been so disgustingly commercialised that I cringe at myself for even sitting through it, and then, out of patriotism and childhood habits, I sit through it anyways. Of course, it doesn't make any sense to completely rid cricket of sponsorships or endorsements, but things get out of hand when fans spend a higher proportion of the day watching Hyundai advertisements than good cricketing shots.

Worst of all, Cricket's bonanza rise has meant a sharp dip in fan popularity and financial support for other sports in India. Cricket isn't the only sport where we are successful - India is rising in Tennis, Badminton, Chess, and of course our 'National Sport', Field Hockey. We are an improving nation in Football and of course, there is a rising wave of interest for basketball in the country.

But nothing, unfortunately, absolutely nothing, will ever catch the entire country's emotions like cricket does. If the Yao Ming affect was to happen in India - i.e. - an Indian was good enough to make the NBA, it would still not change our culture like the culture in China. China has passionately embraced hoops over the last 10 years. In India, any other sport can only aim at becoming number two at best.

And why is that, you ask? Because with the rise of other sports like Football, Basketball, or Tennis, the share of fan interest, at best is going to be divided. No single hoops event anywhere in the world is going to halt the Indian government on a Wednesday afternoon like the India-Pakistan Semi-Final did. Nothing that the Indian Football Team achieves will be considered a bigger achievement than India potentially lifting a Cricket World Cup. In India, even the individual 'stars' of other sports, like Viswanathan Anand, Somdev Devvarman, Sushil Kumar, Saina Nehwal, Abhinav Bindra, or others, are only known because the Media has chosen to occasionally focus on them as individuals - very rarely has that interest spilled to the sport itself being hyped - The names above are arguably bigger in India than Chess, Tennis, Weightlifting, Badminton, or Shooting.

At best - and I'm obviously speaking from a hoops-point-of-view here - we Hoopistanis can hope for a number two spot in India. Who knows if the best players in India will ever receive the love and adulation usually reserved for cricketers... Who knows if the most-discussed sporting event in India, even for a day, will ever be a basketball game. What we can be fairly sure of is, barring a disaster of catalslymic events (every cricket game is fixed, and thus the game is like WWE, or the 2012 apocalpyse), Cricket will never be replaced in India.

RIBA League brings back club basketball to Delhi

With a thunderous in-game dunk, Vishesh Bhriguvanshi brought the rim literally crashing down. It had happened for the second time that day. The on-court action had to take a pause.

Amazingly, even a broken rim is worth the highlight of witnessing a show-stopping dunk. And there has been no shortage of show-stopping highlights at the RIBA League in Delhi this year.

Until about two years ago, there was one prestigious, All-India, basketball club tournament in Delhi, a tournament hosted by the Prithvi Nath Club (PNC). Unfortunately, ever since the PNC court was broken down, the country’s capital has been devoid of a top-level club tournament.

But thanks to the Reebok IGMA Basketball Association (RIBA) League, club basketball is back in Delhi this year: Organised by the IGMA Sports Management company and in affiliation with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI), the five-day league-cum-knockout tournament, featuring some of the top basketball players in India, was launched at the DDA Sports Complex in Vasant Kung earlier this week. Eight of the top Men’s club teams in India are taking part in this new competition, which is set to conclude with the Final on March 6th.

“We had only been involved with organising corporate cricket tournaments earlier,” said Rajeev Mahajan, the young Director of IGMA, “But we wanted to expand into other sports. I got the help of some basketball players in Delhi to help set up this tournament.”

Mahajan added: “I had never really followed basketball before, but have been enjoying the intensity of the games here. It has been going well and we want to take this tournament to an even bigger level next year.”

The IGMA was given all the right kind of support in helping set this tournament up: former Indian Women’s basketball captain Divya Singh, her younger sister Akanksha, who is a player in the Delhi team, and many more Delhi players came to the aid of IGMA. The Basketball Federation of India (BFI) lent its hand to in organising the event. Sponsorship came via Reebok and ONGC.

“We really wanted to see an established All-India basketball tournament in Delhi,” says Divya, “This year is a trial run – we are hoping to incorporate Women’s teams from next year’s competition.”

The participating teams feature some of the biggest names in Indian basketball. For the first year, Chennai Customs, Air Force, Signals, PNC, Western Railway, Army, RCF, and hosts DDA Sports Club signed up to take part. A pleasant surprise of the tournament so far has been that the participating teams have been extremely competitive against each other – there have barely been any blowouts and most games have been decided in the last minutes, giving the fans some exciting hoops action on the court.

On the first day of the games, a Slam Dunk contest was organised, which was won by Western Railway and Indian National team forward Yadwinder Singh. The dunks have been falling regularly in games and in practice too. The rims get fixed and the action continues!

Just like IGMA have taken a step away from cricket to embrace basketball, so have some of India’s best-known cricketers. Pace bowler Ishant Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan (better known for his stint with the Delhi Daredevils) have been making regular visits to the sidelines of the RIBA League to soak in the hoop action. Sharma, who watched basketball for the first time, has been especially impressed.

And if IGMA continue their promotion in the game, there will be more in the city who will start enjoying it – Mahajan revealed his plans to start a basketball academy in the city. With the right kind of leadership and coaching, we could see a lot more youngsters embracing the game, and one day, hopefully soaring skywards for thunderous dunks of their own!

The greatest sportsperson ever

I picked up today's copy of the the Times of India newspaper this morning, panned my eyes down to mid-way on the front page, and saw the words: "Is Sachin Tendulkar the greatest sportsperson ever?" The article was aiming to set off a debate and a poll to decide the best athletes amongst each sports best, the greatest of the greatest. The inclusion of God himself, aka, Sachin, was itself of certain debate, since many cricket purists believe he's second best to cricketing legend Don Bradman, but in my eyes, that debate had been put to rest decades ago. Sachin and Bradman are to cricket what Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain are to basketball: Bradman and Chamberlain hold the craziest records (Bradman's 99.94 test average, Chamberlain's unearthly averages of 50.4 ppg and 25.7 rpg in the '61-62 season). But both these greats played in a different era of the sport, and experts in both fields will agree that in terms of true talent, Sachin and Jordan are still the Greatest of All Times (G.O.A.T.) in their respective sports.

A few minutes after putting the newspaper down, I happened to pick up my gold edition copy of SLAM magazine's awesome Jordan Issue, a heady volume of all things MJ, from interviews, rare photographs, greatest dunks, his years at North Carolina, his championship stories from Chicago, his influence on the international game, and many, many Air Jordan shoes!

The Jordan reminders got me thinking deeper about this issue: this is an argument that I (and I'm sure, many of you), have had several times before, so kudos to TOI for making it sort of official. One player has been chosen from each major sport that is relevant to Indians (Sorry Baseball, Babe Ruth), and Tennis gets two sportsmen, male and female. Jordan is obviously basketball's representative, but I was a little disappointed that the article barely mentioned His Airness.

Once again, this is the list from TOI:

Cricket: Sachin Tendulkar
Basketball: Michael Jordan
F1: Michael Schumacher
Cycling: Lance Armstrong
Track & Field: Carl Lewis
Tennis Men: Roger Federer
Tennis Women: Martina Navrativola
Hockey: Dhyan Chand
Boxing: Mohammed Ali
Football: Pele
Gymnastics: Nadia Comaneci
Golf: Tiger Woods

Already, this list is controversial, to say the least. Is Roger Federer even the greatest tennis player of his era, now that Nadal has his number? Maradona (and some Zidane fans) may have a thing or two to say about Pele's selection. And forgive me, gymnastic fans, but I have no idea who the hell Nadia Comaneci is. I'm sure she was talented.

Anyways, despite my basketball addiction now, like every other Indian child, I grew up a Sachin Tendulkar fanatic. I liked him much more than I liked cricket, and I know that I will probably lose half my interest in the sport once God retires. After his 50th test century in South Africa a few days ago, his legend gets greater and greater. It was true poetic justice that Sachin was the first man to get to 200 in an ODI. And he owns more cricket records to his name than records that exist in other sports.

But despite everything, I don't think he's the greatest of this list. For Indians, yes, no doubt, but definitely not worldwide. This is why Michael Jordan is special. MJ has not only done the same record-wise for the NBA that Tendulkar did for cricket, but he has won the biggest prize over and over again with a more lethal precision and perfection than anyone else in any sport. In a competitive league of stars, Jordan shone brightest, winning 6 of 8 championships in the 90s, only losing the two years in the middle to pre-mature retirement.

But like Sachin, his influence on his sport, and the world of sports in general, actually extends BEYOND the sport. Jordan is bigger than basketball. You will still meet people around the world who haven't heard of basketball but know the name Michael Jordan. Jordan's coach Phil Jackson once famously said that he could be nowhere in the world, hiking up a mountain in Bhutan, and see a monk in a Chicago Bulls hat. This was much BEFORE NBA became famous internationally. Jordan made sneakers famous too - he made it possible for stars to have signature shoes, and shoes to be sold on brand name of the stars alone.

Sachin, too, has had that kind of effect on Indians. In a country separated by language, region, caste, economic status, religion and oh-so-many other things, Sachin is the one unifying factor, the strongest one to represent all India since Gandhi, and I don't believe that's an exaggeration at all. He is the only one in India beyond criticism, because for 21 years he has done more for the image of a successful Indian than any other.

Other athletes like Pele, Mohammed Ali and Tiger Woods have had similar 'beyond-sport' influences on the world. Ali, especially is a favourite to be revered as the best of the best in this list.

But call it my basketball bias. Call it the fact that I just respect sportsmen who dominate team-oriented sports more than others. And cricket, I'm sorry to say, is an individual's game masked behind a team concept.

This is why my vote for the G.O.A.T. will stay with Michael Jordan. Hail to His Airness!

FIBA 33: A boon or a curse for hoops?

When the first ever Youth Olympic Games (YOG) took place in Singapore earlier this year, there was no sign of a proper basketball tournament. I use "proper basketball" deliberately, because the tournament showcased the large scale debut of FIBA's latest brainchild, the FIBA 33.

Maybe I used correct the "latest brainchild" statement - after all, every ball player alive (no really, EVERY ball player alive) has played a less formalised version of FIBA 33. If you don't know, FIBA 33 is half-court basketball, played 3-on-3, first one to 33 in regulation time wins. Regulation time is just 10 minutes (with five minute halves), and if no team reaches 33, the one leading when time expires wins. Each team has three players plus one substitute. There is just a 10 second shot-clock, and like the international unspoken rules of basketball half-court play, if the defensive team gains possession of the ball, they have to first pass it outside the three-point arc before starting their offense.

It sounds suspiciously like every pick-up game ever played, except with referees and timers - plus I'm not sure if FIBA would be too hot on the Shirts vs. Skins idea.

Anyways, due to the fast-paced and exciting nature of the game, it was a roaring success at the YOG, capturing the largest (and loudest) crowds. Even India had a four-member squad present at the games - they failed to win any of their group games, but beat a couple of teams in the 17-20 classification to end at 18th spot.

The success prompted FIBA to discuss the format at the FIBA World Conference in Istanbul during the World Championships. Now, FIBA are hoping to take the 3-on-3 format to a bigger stage.

“We are all very excited about FIBA33, and in view of its popularity after just one day, it isn’t too far fetched to imagine it one day making it into the Olympics in its own right,” said FIBA Secretary-General Patrick Baumann.

Baumann has even said: "The US will always be able to have 12 players of the same quality which India would not be able to have. But India can have three, four or five players who can play three-on-three and they will be at the same level as the US"

FIBA president Bob Elphinston has added: "We want to use FIBA 33 to encourage more young girls and boys to play the game, to get started in basketball. We also want to create FIBA 33 as a separate discipline, not dissimilar to what we see at the Olympic Games with volleyball, in that we have beach volleyball and we have volleyball."

Is there anyone else here who thinks this new concept sounds a bit too familiar? Let's see, what is that one sport in India that involves a lot of players and goes on for five days? There is a one-day version of that sport, too, but it goes on for hours and hours. People love this sport in our country but the organisers and some fans (but mainly, the advertisers) felt the show was too long and too slow to be enjoy / capitalised on fully. So they introduced a much shorter version of the game, inspired by the version played on the grass-root level, and gave it a nifty name with a two-digit number and soon, this version became so big and popular that those who fell in love with the original version of the sport said that the new version was killing it.

I'm talking of course of cricket - After the Test format and ODI format was deemed 'too slow' for some fans, in came Twenty-20 cricket, with just 20 over games to satisfy all our cricketing needs in under three hours. T-20 has become a phenomenon since, and its league in India, the IPL, has become almost as lucrative as football's EPL and basketball's NBA.

But T-20 critics are aplenty - many have complained that it has killed the soul of the game, or that it encourages pinch-hitting cricket without the classic technical skills, that it has become more of a spectacle than a sport.

Whatever side you take on this argument, it is clear that T-20 is here to stay. Now, FIBA 33 is a similar story in many ways. Of course, basketball's long format is about the same length as cricket's short one, but the intention in both cases is to serve the needs of the our collectively shortening attention spans (I'd be surprised if many readers have actually attentively made it this far down in this article!). Just like T-20, FIBA goes back to the grass-roots of the game, thus perhaps encouraging more participation.

But this is where we feel that FIBA needs to be careful. The 3-on-3 format encourages the one thing that many basketball purists detest - the 'I' not in 'Team'. Shanmugam Sridhar, the coach of India's 3-on-3 team that played in Singapore, said: "The 3-on-3 format made for very quick games. It especially helped in showcasing the talents of individual players."

Just like cricket purists have complained that T-20 has "dumbed-down" the game, FIBA 33 critics too may claim that the new format might be a too simplistic version to feature on the big stage.

On the positive note though, T-20 has been good for other formats of cricket in one way - by changing the player's attitude towards greater aggression, and of course, serving as a good platform for youngsters to prove their mettle for the "more respected" versions of the games.

FIBA 33 scores big in the fact that it will be able to involve more countries, since they will be required to field lesser players. India's involvement in the tournament in Singapore proved just that. Also, quicker games would mean greater participation. And both T-20 and FIBA 33 have been great crowd-pullers, so why not just give the people what they want?

Which side of the fence do you sit on with this issue? And while you mull over it, here is a video of the Indian three-on-three team at the Youth Olympics in their 27-11 win over South Africa.

Chelsea FC to tie-up with NBA to bring facilities to India?

I'm not a fan of Chelsea Football Club. I'm a Real Madrid fan, and in England, my favourite team is Liverpool. So when I think Chelsea, I think Luis Garcia.

That out of the way, let me move on to more pressing (and relevant) matters. Business Standard (or 'BS', as they like to be acronymed), have released a bit of news today that announcing that Chelsea FC, the English Premier League champions, are looking for a partnership with an Indian corporate house to promote "football schools, merchandise, cafes, and restaurants" and India.

But that's not all, according to this report, Chelsea is also looking to tie-up with the NBA in India to work together to set up infrastructure.

“We are looking at an anchor partner which has to be an Indian corporate house, which understands the Indian market and not a foreign MNC. It is through this route that we plan to enter India and set up our football schools and franchise our brand,” said Ben Wells, head of marketing of the Chelsea Football Club.

Chelsea is also in talks with the US-based National Basketball Association (NBA) to jointly set up schools — having facilitates for both football and basketball. “There is no clash between these two and as NBA is already in India, we are open to talks with them to build the infrastructure” said Wells.

More good news for football and basketball fans in India... I can't wait till the day when I wake up, switch on a news channel, and I don't see a bunch of cricketers whining about bookies, 99-not-outs, and having to actually run a little from time to time.

You will hear an Indian accent when you call Mike Brown

Share|

I found a surprisingly funny story today and realised immediately that I had to blog it. The biggest free agent story of all time now potentially has an Indian stakeholder. Let me introduce to you to the characters in our little drama this morning...

First meet Mike Brown. Brown is the former head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and fired just three days ago from his position after leading the reigning two time NBA MVP LeBron James and the Cavs to two straight years as the best regular season team in the league. Of course, that didn't translate to post-season success, as the best Cavs team ever assembled once again choked in the playoffs, this time at the hands of the Boston Celtics. Brown also has struggled with teaching this talented squad with LeBron, Shaq, Jamison, Mo Williams, Varejao, Hickson, Anthony Parker and others any sort of offence except 'give-lebron-james-the-basketball-and-pray'.

Now meet Rajesh Kumar. Kumar is a 24 year old from New Delhi who recently completed his Master's degree in engineering from New York University, and has lived in the US for around two years. In August 2008, Kumar lived in Cleveland for a month, and aquired a phone number... which turned out to be Mike Brown's old number.

So of course, ever since Mike Brown got fired from his job, Rajesh Kumar heard the condolences. From NBA Fanhouse:

"I have gotten over 150 phone calls since (Monday)," Kumar said Tuesday afternoon in an interview with FanHouse from New York. "I took a nap and I woke up and I had 37 voice mail messages. I thought Mike Brown must have lost a big match."
Pardon Kumar's terminology.
"I'm a fan of cricket," said Kumar, who later was able to find out Brown's firing was the reason for all the commotion. "It's a very exciting sport."
Kumar doesn't know who most of the callers have been since he simply tells them they have the wrong number. As for the messages left on Kumar's voice mail, which has an automated recording rather than his voice or name, he has deleted them immediately.

But Kumar did say he got a call asking for Brown from somebody identified as being from the office of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. The call ended after Kumar said it no longer is Brown's number.

So why would Bloomberg's office be calling Brown? Well, Bloomberg did speak on his weekly Friday show on WOR Radio on May 14 about believing Cleveland star guard LeBron James, who had played for Brown, would want to sign with New York or New Jersey when he can become a free agent this summer.

Don't ask Kumar, though, to speculate about any relationship between Bloomberg, Brown and James. Kumar knows little about James.
"I had heard of him," said Kumar, saying he learned of James before he got Brown's old cell number but couldn't speak much about him. "I'm not sure when I heard of him."
Kumar's number was Brown's at least through the 2007-08 season. After he got his number, Kumar began receiving some calls for the coach.
"After about a week, I realized he must be a celebrity," Kumar said. "I wondered who this Mike Brown was. So I Googled him."

Wow! There are at least 2,523 funny things about the story above, but I'm going to ramble off the first few that pop up in my head:

- His name is Rajesh Kumar. I mean, he could've only gotten Indianner if he was called Patel or something.
- The Americans just don't seem to understand the word 'match'. Match? "Pardon his terminology!"
- I love how he drops the fact that he's a fan of cricket and that "it's a very exciting sport".
- So, apparently, the Mayor of New York called him. To discuss LeBron James.
- Kumar really has no idea who LeBron James is. "I have heard of him - I'm not sure when I heard of him," may be the greatest quote of the LeBron James free-agency mania.
- And finally, Kumar googled Brown thinking that Brown is a celebrity. I'm not sure I would call the former Cavs coach that, but hey, standing next to LeBron James and feigning orders while actually being his slave has to count for some celebrity status, right?

Come on Kumar. Do your Indian buddy here a favour - next time LeBron dials a wrong number and finds you, tell him about how awesome the New York Mayor / The Knicks are. You need to help make him a Knick next season. And wish him good luck for his next 'match', too.

Share|

A tale of three leagues

Share|

It's a tale of three leagues, in three countries, of three sports.
1. National Basketball Association (NBA) - Basketball, USA
2. English Premier League (EPL) - Football, England
3. Indian Premier Leauge (IPL) - Cricket, India

India has a total of ONE succesful professional sports league: the IPL. ONE. Like it or hate it, but that's the truth. Hell, even many cricket purists hate it, disregarding the Twenty-20's format as 'real' cricket.

Whatever - we aren't here to argue about what cricket should be. We're here to talk about what the IPL wants to be. The IPL wants to be the NBA, and it has wanted to be the NBA for quite some time. It is no secret that the league format, the franchises, the cheerleaders, the dugout (or "bench"), the player profiles, the "strategic" time-outs, the advertising frenzy, the television broadcasts, etc in the IPL have borrowed heavily from the NBA and even the EPL. Sorry football fans, but in many ways financially, the IPL has actually overtaken the EPL. According to the inaugural Annual Review of Global Sports Salaries (ARGSS) (later published on sportingintelligence.com), IPL became the second highest paid league in the world this year, overtaking the EPL. You know what's it second to? The NBA.

Even NBA Commissioner/Tsar/Maharaja David Stern become a fan of the IPL last November. In an interview with DNA-Mumbai, Stern said, "We are closely watching as to how the IPL has been a game-changer in sport. It has adopted a number of Western sporting practices like the franchise system, player bidding, the home-and-away games, double-headers and the like."

Now, IPL may take yet another page out of the NBA book. After adding two new franchises to the existing eight in the IPL, the BCCI is looking to change its format to finish the tournament in the same seven-week period as the previous three IPL editions. Until IPL-3, each team played each other team twice, home and away, to play a total of 14 matches each, which meant that a grand total of 60 matches were played. If the same format is continued for 10 teams, 94 games would have to be played. The BCCI don't want that because they have a time constraint.

One of their options is to do with the NBA does: Divide the teams into two groups (NBA-read: Conferences) of five. Like the NBA, the teams in the same conference play each other three or four times, whereas teams in opposing conferences play each other twice, once home, and once away. Each team plays 82 games in the regular season. In the IPL, the proposition is that each team plays other teams in its groups twice (home and away) and the teams in the group once.

Good idea, but it does create problems. Home advantage is something that teams obviously rely on, so on what basis will the home games be played in the inter-group games?

The other idea I feel is worse, which is to have the same round-robin system in the two groups, and then the best teams move on to a 'Super Six' stage and they all play each other. With this format, there are many teams who may never get to play each other, and that completely defies the whole point of being a league.

My solution is this: screw the groups. Don't follow the NBA, follow the EPL. Have all teams play each other home AND away like the current system. Play 94 games. I can hear the groans already: there aren't enough days to fit these many games. Or the groans from TV broadcasters: we can't show more than one or two games a day because TV ratings will take a hit.

I don't see why the league can't be expanded to take a longer time. This way, it will become less of a quick tournament and more of a 'season'. Yes, international cricket clashes will cause a problem, but just like international breaks in the football season, the IPL can incorporate their season around cricket international breaks, too.

And it's fine to glamourise our leagues just as media has done it in the US, but their needs to be a limit, and that limit is crossed when the sport is overshadowed by celebrity and marketing culture. I searched for 'ipl' in Google-Images, and you know what I got? Three of the first four photos are of Katrina Kaif, Preity Zinta, and Shah Rukh Khan. The first cricketers don't show up till the eight pic. Even Vijay Mallaya scores earlier.

If we are truly looking to bring a sports league/season culture such as that in the USA, Europe, etc into India, our leagues have to be bigger, last longer, and be ABOUT THE SPORT. It is laughable that the second-richest league in the world lasts just seven weeks.

Share|

Hoopistani on iSport

Share|

For the fans of basketball, by the biggest fan... Hoopistani is now set to contribute a share of basketball news and features to iSport.in.

iSport.in is a comprehensive sports website 'for the fans, by the fans'. Sports fuel passion & our fellow fans help us keep the content fresh unlike any other site.

iSport features news and blogs on other sports from Indian writers, such as Cricket (obviously, it's friggin India), Football, Motor Sports, Tennis, Basketball, and others.

Share|

Living the Game: The need for a grassroots basketball movement in India

In large pockets of America, basketball is more than a sport — it is a part of everyday life. A basketball court is a social center, basketball shoes are essential fashion accessories, and hip-hop music/culture remains eternally intertwined with the game. In such cultures, “playing ball” is more than being in a professional league, a college tournament, or as part of a fitness regime — “playing ball” starts from the grassroots, it’s a recreational activity, just something to do, something embedded deeply in the lifestyle.

The English, and other Europeans, and South Americans have football — the soccer kind of football — it is for them a recreation, a get-together with friends, the perfect pastime.

In India, our favorite pastime is cricket. Every thin lane, or gullie in India is a cricket pitch, every wooden stick a bat, every round object a ball. It is deeply embedded in modern Indian culture — the majority of Indian societies see children having impromptu cricket matches in their neighborhood, by the ghats of the Ganga, every barren field is a stadium, cricket references and metaphors have become part of everyday speak in the country, and get-togethers in roadside tea-shops only discuss cricket scores.

The result of our addiction with cricket is that it has become the biggest thing in India since Butter Chicken. Cricket apparel rules in athletic stores across the country, the majority of sport news in India is about cricket, and every Indian from every strata of society unites under the banner of cricket. That is why India is now one of the strongest cricket teams in the world, Indian players the world’s best, and the Indian Premier League (IPL) of cricket the world’s richest.

So when the NBA decided to tap the 1.2 billion strong Indian market to popularize basketball, they knew they were up against some tough competition. After launching an NBA-India website, their most recent development has been a deal with rich industrial conglomerate Mahindra Group to launch a recreational league in three Indian cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, and Ludhiana. The league will tip off in a month’s time and will last for seven weeks.

Eventually the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) plans to launch school and college leagues with the NBA’s guidance to promote the sport amongst the youth. When I spoke to BFI president Harish Sharma, he said the idea is to use the school, college, and city recreational league as a launch-pad to eventually develop a professional basketball league in India in three years time.

Yes, these efforts are going to increase urban interest for basketball in India, but will it really influence more people to love basketball the same way they love cricket? Everyone interested in the development of basketball in India (BFI, NBA, and those working for the game on a local level) admit their eventual goal is to make it the second favorite sport in the country, but even for that to happen, the game has to be more culturally ingrained into our lifestyles.

I believe what is really needed is a grassroots movement, a movement to make basketball more than a game but a culture. Why does the NBA, for example, sell so easily in a country like the Philippines? NBA players have created waves in the Philippines for years, including the famous Gilbert Arenas trip a few years ago. The answer: So influenced by Americanism, basketball is part of everyday lifestyle in the Philippines, bringing with it its swagger, the hip-hop culture, and NBA fanaticism.

For India, one such movement to popularize basketball into rural and grassroots lifestyle is the Sumpoorna Basketball School. Sumpoorna is the name of a basketball camp — or like its founder Subhash Mahajan likes to call “a grassroots basketball revolution” — that has been slowly growing in small, rural town of Tumkur in Southern India over the past five years. Driven by a lifelong love of basketball, Mahajan has set up this basketball camp mostly for small town and village youth, which has grown over the years to have taught basketball basics to up to 6,000 youngsters around the rural area, and launched the Sumpoorna Basketball Tournament where dozens of small school and recreational teams compete against each other.

Mahajan, who is from Kapurthala in Punjab, spent nearly three decades as a basketball coach before setting up the Sumpoorna School in 2005. He chose Tumkur, which is a village near the much-larger and richer city of Bangalore, in Karnataka.

“In India, sports and money are not compatible,” Mahajan said, “Unless of course, that sport is cricket. Selling the game of basketball amongst city kids in posh schools might change the commercial culture, but the love of the sport has to come from the grassroots level — it seems that I’m fighting this battle alone.”

“In India, kids below Grade 9 can still be engaged in basketball and taught the basics — unfortunately, after that, they have to turn toward their ‘real life’, their studies, their other career, and basketball fades away.”

Mahajan’s camp is a unique concept for India — it is a summer camp of basketball skills in a rural area. He has spent his own money into a large basketball campus, where he already has three courts and is now investing for 13 more. Kids who join the camp for around five days, where they stay in residence and play ball, all day.

As the awareness and interest for the game has spread, Mahajan has been able to organize large tournaments, and is looking to get larger. “We want to tie up with more schools, especially from the bigger cities, so that they can learn basics. I want them to live the game and not just play it.” A major step that Mahajan is looking to take with Sumpoorna is to invite senior basketball players in India to oversee and promote the Sumpoorna tournaments.

Another unique feature of the Sumpoorna tournaments has been that the games are played without refs. Indian sport has an unfortunate reputation of being shrouded in corruption and bias — and the referees have regularly been the ones footing the blame for unfair calls and pre-meditated results. The injustice was highlighted a little more than a month ago, when the referees and officials were accused of helping the home team at a major national university tournament. At Sumpoorna, the players are expected to resolve the calls amongst themselves, and more often than not, the system works.

“The players from the age 9 onwards are taught to self referee and agree on consensual play,” he said, “It is basketball at its best — the way we played it here forty years ago.”

Mahajan is from an old-school brand of hoop lovers who played the game because they were addicted to the game, and even after his prime, he could never leave the game behind. With Sumpoorna, he has been able to provide a platform through which youngsters can become hoop addicts from an early age, and as they grow, basketball becomes part of their cultural upbringing.

If these efforts are complemented by the popularization of the game in urban India, we could be heading toward a future where basketball could become a more common pastime, and as the number of players grows, the quality of basketball will eventually improve, too.

*First published on SLAMONline.com on March 25, 2010.

Reliance and IMG to develop sports facilities and league in India

Closely following on the news that the Mahindra Group will be partnering the NBA to launch a recreational basketball league in three Indian cities, here's another corporate venture in expanding sports not named "cricket" in India: Reliance Industries, led by India's wealthiest Mukesh Ambani is partnering with US-based sports marketing company IMG Worldwide in a joint venture to build sports facilities in India.

IMG-Reliance will also develop professional basketball and football leagues in India, nurture young talent at the academies, and train coaches in these sports as well.

From the Business Standard:

The new company, IMG Reliance, would set up sports facilities across the country to train athletes, thus developing the sports market. The model would be similar to the one followed in mature sports and entertainment markets such as the US. The companies plan to create and operate major sports and entertainment assets.
Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries, said: "Development of sports and the sporting culture is a social imperative for India in the 21st century. World-class infrastructure, frugal engineering, technology and scientific coaching are an integral part of development of today's sporting talent globally."

Plans are underway to create an agency to offer 360-degree sports management to celebrities from the world of sports, Bollywood and fashion. IMG would transfer its existing business and assets in the country to the joint venture. These include the Aircel Chennai Open, the Association of Tennis Professionals World Tour event and Lakmé Fashion Week.
However, the ongoing Indian Premier League would stay with IMG and the company's international business and executive team is to manage it.
Ted Forstmann, chairman and CEO of IMG, said: "The performance of Indian athletes on the national and international stage will improve dramatically with the correct development strategies. As a consequence, the commercial performance of sport and entertainment in India will be enhanced."

To quote an article from the The Wall Street Journal, IMG owner Ted Forstmann said that "the venture's ambitions are to create something akin to England's Premier League, for which IMG produces and distributes television programming... People might laugh at that now, but let's see where we are in five years"

The real potential profits from the venture will come from the development of professional sports leagues. The IMG-Reliance venture will look to strike arrangements with India's soccer and basketball federations to help them build these leagues.

Wow. I don't mean neccessarily good wow or bad wow... Just.. Wow...

It's all really happening now isn't it? When the richest Indian company and one of the most succesful sports management companies from the USA get involved in helping to build facilities and a basketball league in India, you know it's more than just empty words.


I've always believed that India's sporting success has always come despite the government. Despite the public sector. So, while the BFI plans and contemplates and slowly trudges towards starting a pro basketball league in the country, here come Ambani and Forstmann with a lot more money and a lot more vampire fangs to suck into the growing Indian athletic juices. Their proposed basketball and football leagues will not be too different in terms of the commercial standpoint from Lalit Modi's IPL T-20 Cricket league. Purists may completely disregard what the IPL and T-20 have done to the game, but there is no denying that now being a professional cricketer is an exciting and possible option for a lot more Indians than before.

This could turn out well for basketball in India. Better facilities, better training, more money, more talent, better teams, more fans, more merchandise... More basketball.

On the other side, it could all go bonkers... If the soul of the game itself is disregarded. Money may be able to buy a lot of things, but it'll be interesting to see how they manage to buy fans for the game in India. It's not impossible, for basketball and football are very easily likable sports, and are already two of the fastest growing sports in the country. I just hope that, like T-20 threatened to butcher what purists called "real cricket", this league doesn't butcher the game of basketball itself.

The Cricket Delusion: How Indian basketball can learn from the recent field hockey debacle

Let me start with my thesis: Sport in India is a joke.

I write this article as I watch my favourite ever sportsmen devastate the Bangladesh bowling attack with another spectacular performance. He has just completed his 45th Test century (half a dozen more than his nearest competitor), and would go on to make a breathtaking 143 runs.



It’s been 20 years since Sachin Tendulkar first gripped India’s emotions as a talented 16-year-old, and up to this day, he remains in the eye of the Indian public the one untouchable, uniting figure in the country. Globally, he’s ranked as one of the greatest to ever play the game. I don’t exaggerate when I say that there has been no more unanimously loved Indian since that Gandhi character.

Sport can’t be a problem in India when an athlete is the nation’s more powerful icon, can it? Sport can’t be a problem when the Indian Premier League (IPL), a competition of cricket’s newest format, the Twenty-20, is Asia’s first billion dollar sporting league , and one of the richest sporting leagues around the world? Of the top-10 most earning cricketers in the world, spots 1-4 and 6 are occupied by Indians. Number one is the captain of our national cricket team, MS Dhoni, and although his 2009 earnings of approximately 10 million USD are Lilliputian compared to the amount of money that superstar athletes make in other sports worldwide, these cricketers aren’t exactly fighting to feed their kids.

How can sport be a problem when India is ranked the number 1 Test Cricket team in the world? How can sport be a problem when our cricketers are as famous as our much-revered film stars? How can I call sport a joke in India, when millions keep their eyes glued to their TV sets, the housewives offering prayers to our pick of a hundred thousand gods for another victory, the fathers ditching work and the sons ditching school to sit home and watch another India international cricket match?

The problem, obviously, is the fact that all the glorious stories and figures in India belong to cricket, and if we do strike lucky and succeed in another sport, the successes are either quickly forgotten, or the newspapers find it tough to squeeze in the news amongst the barrage of daily cricket stories that the Indian audiences are overdosed with.

There are, of course, a few exceptions. Field Hockey, officially our ‘national sport’ has been headline material twice over the past few years. The first time was in August 2007, when Bollywood came to temporarily save the day (and earn a lot of money) as the blockbuster film Chak De India on the story of India’s women’s hockey team made the sport the flavour of the month.

The second time was a few weeks ago, when the members of the Indian hockey team boycotted a national camp in Pune, demanding their unpaid dues. The news wouldn’t have made as much noise as it did but for the fact that India is set to host the Hockey world cup in a month. There was suddenly the ridiculous danger of the home team fielding a B-squad for the greatest stage of their so-called national sport.



The stand-off between the players and the hockey federation stretched for several days, with everyone from state ministers and movie stars (After Chak De India, superstar actor Shahrukh Khan became the self-appointed ad-hoc spokesperson for Indian hockey) pitching in their opinion.There were debates on national TV, front page articles in the newspapers, and more editorials written about the sport nationwide than those accumulated in the last ten years. The Hockey Federation seemed to have the sponsor money with them, so when news broadcasters asked the federation’s bigwigs in a live telecast about where the money went, they got bumbling, anxious responses. The audiences were glued: we smelled corruption and couldn’t look away.

Cricket must have watched jealously for a week. Well, finally, a resolution was reached: the players got their money, and India began another cricket series. The media’s attention shifted away and order was restored in the universe.

Most of the sport fans in India didn’t even know that the hockey world cup was imminent, and what more, that it was being hosted by India. The general public only became interested when hockey went wrong, and we suddenly had the federation to throw our verbal rotten apples at, and Shahrukh and the media had us showering our sympathy on our poor professionals who never get what they deserve, and the facilities are appalling, and the money is bad, and now, it is the women’s hockey team turn to start asking for their money and so on and so forth.

The problem is that, with all the attention and finances thrown around by the broadcasters, promoters, media, and government authorities to make cricket the most lucrative business in India, there is little left room left to share with other sports in the country. It is perhaps no surprise then, that India, a country of a billion and a half people, has won a staggering ONE (1) individual gold in the history of the Olympic Games, and that too went to the shooter Abhinav Bindra at Beijing 2008, who was rich enough to self-finance his training, equipment, and success, free from the meddling hands of the government. The Olympics, obviously, don’t feature cricket, or India would have be raking in the medals and the positive vibes.

Team sports in India, such as football, basketball, and hockey, are forever stifled by age-old bureaucratic traditions, where a young talent finds it near improbable to climb up the ranks without politicking with the authorities on the side. Football has managed to thrive a little more than the others because of the century old tradition in the country and the marginally successful I-League. Even they have complaints: International superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi are far better known than the members of our own national team.

The hockey debacle has once again exposed India’s monomaniacal obsession with cricket. A cricket international would never be treated the way the hockey internationals were. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is obviously the country’s richest sporting body. Compared to it, other sports, and particularly basketball, is still miles behind. Basketball even lacks the ‘national sport’ sentiment that hockey is often credited (or burdened) with or the historical significance of football.

Ayaz Memon, one of India’s most respected sport’s journalist and a columnist for NBA.com/India, writes in his article ‘The Changing Face of Sports’ that, “…NBA can be of help to India: not necessarily because of the sport it represents, but more because of the way it has gone about conducting its business. I used the last word of the previous sentence deliberately, because in India, sport has hardly been seen as business, more as pastime: the government provides some grant, officials hang on to office for power rather than passion for the sport, and players fight heavy odds to eke out a living or at least some glory.”

The NBA business model relies a lot on individual marketing of players to deepen their fan base. Would a basketball star in India ever be marketed this way? Would another sport’s star ever be held in the kind of reverence that is showered on cricketers like Tendulkar or Dhoni? The Basketball Federation of India (BFI) has been pondering bringing in a NBA-inspired league system to basketball here, and although it would generate a little more excitement and hope for the sport, it would only be a modest first step.

Compared to a few of the other sports, Basketball has a relatively cleaner reputation in terms of corruption or embezzlement in India, but I believe that the trend of seniority-based preferential treatment and unfair team selections would have to be cleaned out from the sport’s culture. When I spoke to India’s former women’s national captain Divya Singh, she said, “I don’t like cricket very much, but I admire the way that it is managed. It’s possible for basketball to grow in India. There is a court in most of the schools in India, and kids play the game regularly at a young age. Their talent needs to be channelized in the right way.”



The other good news is that, as time has passed, the attention level of your average viewer is diminishing by the day. Half a century ago, cricket started off as a five-day marathon, and in the 70s morphed into a day-long game. Now, the most recent form of the game (the Twenty-20) only lasts around three hours and has taken cricket hysteria to new heights. If projected as a shorter, faster, and more athletically appealing sport, basketball has the perfect opening to carve out a space for itself in the public's consciousness.

In recent years, Leander Paes, Sania Mirza, Viswanathan Anand, Bhaichung Bhutia, Saina Nehwal, Abhinav Bindra, Vijay Singh, and others have had relative successes in their respective sports, gaining a little bit of fame and commercial value. We are still a long way away before the successes of non-cricket athletes are taken by the majority of Indians seriously. The mainstream media’s regular interest in hockey’s darkest day shouldn’t be just some one-off fling with other sports in India. Like hockey, sports like basketball should be put under the scrutinizing media spotlight, making the structure behind the system accountable as well as help in promoting the game.

*First published on SLAMOnline.com on January 28, 2010.

Australia planning 'IPL' of basketball

So get this: impressed by the media frenzy and commercial success of the Indian Premier League (IPL) of Twenty-20 cricket in India, the Australians are planning a similarly-themed basketball tournament to boost the games popularity in their own country.

From the Brisbane Times:

A radical $250,000 basketball tournament, being billed as the Indian Premier League of hoops, is being planned to help revitalise the sport in Australia.
The week-long tournament, to be held in Adelaide in April, will feature eight privately-owned teams competing for a cash prize and playing under amended rules to encourage high scores and entertaining play.

Teams would earn money according to how far they progress in the tournament, in the same way tennis players do.
The rule restructures are being kept under wraps but may involve cricket-style power plays, where a team is reduced by a player for a period of time, or extra incentive to score points at various stages of the game.

Some of the biggest names in Australian basketball are likely to take part, while owners also have the option of securing the services of overseas stars if deals can be reached.

Now, I've been discussing a possibility of an NBA-inspired basketball league in India for while. In my interview with Indian basketball starlet Divya Singh, Divya said that she believed "... a league will increase the competition level, provide regular games and exposure for players, and will be attractive to the fans.”

Australia already has an NBA-style National Basketball League (NBL), but now they are looking forward to emulating the success of the IPL. I think the intentions are good: more exciting basketball, marketed the right way, will increase fan interest. But this is a dangerous model for us in India should get too romanticized by. I mean, the ideas of 'powerplay' of playing five on four on the court, or points counting more at certain times of the games just make me cringe. These silly rules only end up leading real basketball towards silly exhibitionist stuff, like a Harlem Globetrotter-esque show, or worse Slamball.

An exciting thought, and I would be excited to see if, over the course of time, the BFI create something similar in their footsteps in terms of marketing and increased TV coverage, but please let's not lose the fundamentals.

Temple Of Bounce: A look at the state of basketball in India

In India, routine is religion. Every stone is a temple, and everything is God.

The clings of the temple bells, marigold garlands around stone idols, squeaky marble floors dirtied by muddy bare feet. A devout of the Ganga River takes dips in the river everyday, bowing respectfully to his deity. Followers of Lord Ganesha will visit his temple, touching the floor as a mark of respect before they step in and fold their hands together in front of Ganesha's idol. Even a textbook commands a lion’s share of spirituality. When an Indian student drops a book, he then touches it to his forehead as a means of asking for forgiveness from the Goddess of Knowledge.

And then there are the other temples. The temples where the idols are wooden backboards and round rings. Where the cling of temple bells are replaced by the constantly comforting thuds of bouncing balls. Where the bare feet of the devotees are packed inside way worn pairs of Reeboks. Where, like the temples of the Gods, the disciples touch the floor on the sidelines and then touch their forehead as a mark of respect before they step on to the auspicious court of their one religion, basketball.

India, the second-most populous nation in the world, boasts a claustrophobic census of around 1.15 billion people, and all that the millions from around this large, varied country have been able to sum up to in the basketball world is a 46th place in the FIBA rankings for men, and 44th place for women.

The NBA has recently announced that, following their success in China, they wish to invest in popularizing the sport in India. But it isn’t the game’s popularity that’s holding basketball back. A plethora of young talent passes through school and college every year, shining on the court early in their careers, before quitting the game early in exchange for a less risky, more comfortable career.

Aleksander Bucan, the current head coach of the Senior Men’s team, confirms the game’s popularity. “Basketball is a hugely popular game in India, and this is not accidental,” he says. “It is an interesting game that seems to have captured the imaginations of the youth of the country.”



Bucan, a Serbian, has been leading the Indian team for the past two years, following 14 years of experience with coaching positions in national and professional squads in Serbia and Yugoslavia. He believes that although the youth of the nation show ample interest in the NBA and basketball, there are a host of other problems hampering the game’s growth.

“I don’t want to say much about the deficiencies in the conditions, because there is nothing really that I can do about it,” Bucan says. “It could be up to another 15-20 more years before we can say that the facilities are up to the desired standard. But there are others countries which have been able to produce great global teams and stars without world-class infrastructure, and we should be able to do the same.”

The troubles, as anyone affiliated with any sport in India will tell you, are with the system itself. Unlike other countries, India does not have a league system for most sports. Most of the top-level basketball players in India have other full-time jobs or work with services for the government, such as Railways or the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. Due to this, even the brightest stars of the national team are but semi-professionals. These players only play in sporadically scheduled cups and tournaments, and their lack of day-in, day-out basketball experience then exposes their talent level when the team faces better-prepared international rivals.

And unlike other countries, any sport not named “cricket” isn’t exactly a lucrative career choice for young Indians. The Indian system lacks the honest interest that its neighbor and competitor China has shown in developing a world-class sports faculty. Most of those who take sport seriously past their school days are either rich enough to take such a risk or poor enough to not have any other option. The middle class is more likely to become doctors or businessmen or software engineers or take up other “safer” careers.

India’s individual sport success stories are mostly self-made, independent of the system’s unhelpful hand. They are always the ones who rebel against the otherwise medieval-esque, bureaucratic way that the government handles things, where nothing ever gets done on-time and the full funds never reach the right pockets.

The rules are, of course, different for cricket. Cricket is the darling of the Indian people—an Indian who hasn’t played cricket is a traitor—and anyone who doesn’t believe that Sachin Tendulkar is a God is committing blasphemy. Even the NBA, in their desire to invest in India, admitted that they will strive to make basketball the second-favorite sport in the country.

But cricket, too, isn’t a rich or successful sport because the government specifically chose it to be so—it is the game’s sponsors and media hype that not only keeps it alive—it has made it into an unbelievable lucrative cash-cow.

Perhaps it is then only right that basketball too, should follow the roadmap that cricket has blazed. For two years now, the privately owned Indian Premier League (IPL) of cricket has brought international attention, interest, and most importantly, recession-defying money into the game. Sports such as hockey and football (soccer), too, got their own professional leagues, and in the case of football in particular, there has been a dramatic improvement in the standard of play now that the money is better.

“Basketball isn’t really a job for our players,” Bucan says. “It holds second-place in their minds, behind whatever else they are doing. We need professional basketball clubs in India, but even if we have them, who will play for them?”

“It is like building a house,” he adds, “We need to first build a good basement, a ground floor, a first floor, and then the roof. Similarly, basketball needs to be strengthened at the lower, grass-root levels, and then encouraged in lower division leagues, before a good roof, which would ideally be a pro basketball league in India.”

Bucan and his players believe the creation of such a league are not too far off—the discussion and conceptualizations are already in progress amongst the sports authorities and the basketball federation of India. It is just a matter of time before the league is prepared.

Where they succeeded, though, was in the creation of an energetic, young squad of basketball players on the national levels who are enthusiastic in their religious love for the game and in representing their country. The men’s team, called the Young Cagers, has made relative improvement over the past few years. “Unfortunately, we haven’t had any star players for the past decade,” Bucan says, “But I’m very happy with the team I have, because they are a young generation of players who are very promising and have a good future.”

One such young player is Vishesh Bhriguvanshi, the 19-year-old who won the MVP of the Basketball Without Borders camp last year. “We’re starting to bring some medals home now,” Bhriguvanshi, who plays shooting guard, says of the Young Cagers, “But unless there is better media coverage of our progress, we will continue to get left behind.”

Media momentum will only follow success stories and talent, something which the Young Cagers or the promised league would have to first deliver. Some of the great players of the current generation have included the brilliant but controversial Sozhasingarayer Robinson (Wally Szczerbiak has nothing on names!), who has been an unstoppable offensive force for the country in the past, but was banned for one-and-a-half years from representing state and country, during which he even announced retirement from the sport. (Ever since his ban period ended, Robinson has returned to the game.) Talents such as 23-year-old point guard Talwinderjit Singh “TJ” Sahi, who used to play in a San Jose, CA league, earned the moniker of “Air India,” and showcased his talents in leagues in other countries such as the Philippines, Iran, and Maldives, too. Former captain Trideep Rai is another regular of the team.



The Young Cagers, as well as other basketball enthusiasts in the country may be thousands of miles away from America, but they are able to get their regular fix of the NBA through televised matches and the internet boom. A few years ago, Kevin Garnett visited the country on an adidas promotional tour, and was greeted with frenzied appreciation wherever he stepped his large feet. Similarly, NBA legend Robert Parish came to India late last year as part of an NBA/WNBA hoop school program, and he left behind a lasting impression in the minds of young fans. Since June 2007, the JDBASKETBALL movement, heralded by Coach JD Walsh made its way into India. They have since conducted 75 clinics in nine Indian cities for around 5,000 youngsters.

But all this would be waste without the right exposure at the top level. To keep talented young stars enthusiastic about a career in basketball, the sport needs the finances and the glamor that accompanies cricket, and to achieve this, there is no better solution than the proposed Indian basketball league.

“I want my players to think basketball 365 days a year,” Bucan reiterates. His dream is not far off. There are several players and coaches who are spiritually and romantically attached to the game; people for whom walking on to a court is a religious experience and the thuds of a dribbling ball and the swishes of the net will resonate louder than temple bells. All that is left is to catch them and mold them up to their potential before it’s too late.

*First published on SLAMONLINE.COM on July 21, 2009.