Hoopdarshan Episode 18: Cricket vs. Everything with Jamie Alter‏

Hoopdarshan is back! On Episode 18 of India's finest basketball podcast, hosts Kaushik Lakshman and Karan Madhok catch up with Indian cricket and sports journalist extraordinaire, Jamie Alter. Alter, the Sports Editor of Times of India Digital, explains to us the popularity of cricket in India, what other sports like basketball can learn from cricket's success, and finds parallels between Sachin, Jordan, LeBron, and Yuvraj Singh.

Apart from his current gig for TOI Digital, Alter has previously worked for Cricinfo, All Sports Magazine, and Network 18. He's written/edited websites like cricketnext, IBNlive, and gocricket. He has also authored two books: History of World Cup Cricket and Field of Dreams: The story Behind Dr. DY Patil Sports Stadium.

We discuss a wide range of enlightening and entertaining issues in this podcast, including India's performances at the recent FIBA Asia Basketball Championship, the continuing political rift for leadership of the Basketball Federation of India (BFI), how the IPL model is inspiring other sports leagues, and if there is a real future for basketball in the country.



Hoopdarshan aims to be the true voice of Indian basketball, and since we're such hopeless fans of the game, it will become the voice of everything basketball related we love, from the NBA to international hoops, too. On every episode of Hoopdarshan, we will be inviting a special guest to interview or chat to about a variety of topics. With expert insight from some of the brightest and most-involved people in the world of Indian basketball, we hope to bring this conversation to a many more interested fans, players, and followers of the game.

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Bollywood Showtime: Indian celebrities love the Lakers

If you woke up last night and decided to become an NBA fan, you would be living in a world where Anthony Davis and Marreese Speights were the two best players in the league, the Raptors were the favourites to win the Eastern Conference, and the Lakers were that weird '40-40-40' team (Kobe shoots 40, scores 40, loses by 40). Little would you know that the team in purple-and-gold from Los Angeles are actually one of the most successful franchises in NBA history, winning 16 championships and featuring about half of the NBA's greatest-ever. Five of those championships were collected over the past decade and a half - all partly credited to a certain Kobe Bryant - conveniently during an era when the internet made the world a much smaller place and brought the NBA closer to the Indian fan than ever more.

No surprise then that the Lakers - who already carried with them the legacies of Mikan, West, Chamberlain, Kareem, Magic, and Worthy - are one of the most popular NBA teams worldwide, including in India, of course. So while the likes of LeBron, Durant, and a certain consistently successful Spurs team have ruled the NBA stratosphere over the past few years, Kobe and the Lakers are still kings across the pond in India.

Now, as the NBA expands its outreach in India, it is looking to hook new fans towards the game by using India's most popular bait: Bollywood. Film stars - both superstars and those on the fringes - and the NBA have a neat mutually-beneficial relationship to help each others' visibility. A couple of reoccurring popular names have been cropping up at NBA events in India around the country in recent years, And seeing the photos from these events have brought me to the scientific conclusion that Indian celebrities love the Lakers. Or, Indian celebrities 'love' the Lakers.

One of the common NBA India partners is actress Neetu Chandra (or Neetu Chandraa as her numerologist may have suggested), a long-time supporter of basketball in India as a former Maharashtra player herself. Chandra has a little niche as Taekwondo black-belt holder and basketball fan. She's a regular at the Indian basketball All Star games in Mumbai and now, a regular celebrity attraction at NBA Jam events around several Indian cities. She likes Kobe.

Rannvijay Singh is that guy who was really mean to everyone on MTV Roadies. Now, he's acted in a few Bollywood films and is going to be an army hero for a TV show called Pukaar. He's also an NBA fan apparently who shockingly loves the Lakers and Kobe. NBA India has invited him to several of their events in recent months, including a showcase with former 3x NBA champ Bruce Bowen (where he wore a Lakers T-Shirt, sorry Spurs fans) and of course, NBA Jam. He likes Kobe.

Abhishek Bachchan is a pretty big star right? Amitabh's son, Guru, all the Dhooms, Dostana, Sarkar, Dostana, Happy New Year etc etc etc. Well, did you know that he loves the Lakers? No, he really does, and he's loved them for a while. Since Magic, we hear. He's been to NBA All Games, Lakers games, etc. He was also chosen by Jabong and NBA India to be the celebrity endorser at the NBA's India store launch in Mumbai, where he showed up in a Lakers # 1 jersey (and I thought it was a tribute to Kobe's greatest ever teammate, Smush Parker).

Before Ranbir Kapoor became 'Rockstar', I knew him mostly for the fact that he was once India's second Knicks fan - after me. Well, Ranbir seems to have quit on his roots and joined the purp-and-yellow side, too. He was at a Lakers game in New York a few years ago, and ended up hanging out with Kobe, getting his sneakers, and rooting for the Lakers.

Models/actors Dino Morea and Lara Dutta were a little ahead of the curve of Bollywooders jumping on the NBA bandwagon, but not many people cared back then. The two got VIP access to the Lakers in Los Angeles, hung out with Kobe, came home with a couple of Lakers jerseys, and saw some NBA hoops. It might blow your mind to hear that they like the Lakers too.

But don't fear, Kobe/Laker haters in India. You'll always have Neha Dhupia, who made sure to order a LeBron Heat jersey online from NBAStore.in the first chance she got. Is she going to burn it now that he's gone back to Cleveland or join the bandwagon? I predict door number two.

And then there's this... I have no idea where the photograph is from and when it was taken. But it's only India's greatest-ever sportsman Sachin Tendulkar chilling in a Chicago Bulls hat. Considering Tendulkar's younger look here and the quality of this photograph, I'm gonna guess that this was sometime in the 90s, around the same time that the greatest-ever basketball player - Mr Michael Jordan - was turning the Bulls into a worldwide institution. Now if only we could get Jordan and Tendulkar in the same shot for a meeting of the Gods. It's gonna be like when Thor meets Superman.

No matter how depressing that 3-13 record looks to Lakers fans right now, at least they can take some relief in the fact that Bollywood still believes in them. That's gotta count for something right? For the haters, just wait another decade when the young kids from today become the stars of tomorrow and make LeBron fashionable in India just in time for his 40th birthday.

Indian Tamasha League: The ISL lays down structure for future Indian Basketball League

By and large, sports around the world center around the individual stars playing and dominating at the highest level, instead of the teams they represent or the intricacies of the sport itself. Sure, the serious fraternity behind any sport and serious fans of any club/country will look beyond the individual faces at the top, but mainstream attention comes most from the big names. Virat. Ronaldo. LeBron. Mayweather. Bolt. Tiger. Federer. Manning. Jeter. These are the names that draw the big crowds, the names that sell merchandise, and the names that can create or combust the popularity of their sport.

But a curious thing happened in India last week at the sale of the eight franchises which are set to become the backbone of the Indian Super League (ISL), the highest-profile attempt yet to launch a professional football league in the country. Few people were talking about the names of the stars that would actually play for these teams or the coaches that are confirmed participation. Past foreign footballing superstars like Dwight Yorke, Freddie Ljungberg, Robert Pirès, Louis Saha, and Hernán Crespo are all set to be 'auctioned' off to the various franchises, not to mention India's top football stars who will be entering their names into the fray, too. Peter Schmeichel, Marcel Desailly and Kenny Dalglish are rumoured to participate as the coaches masterminding some of the teams. But across the mainstream media reports of the ISL, these names were rarely mentioned.

Instead, just like everything else in India, the big newsmakers came from familiar grounds: Bollywood and Cricket. Even as the country reached closer to the launch of a potentially game-changing football league, the ironic thing was that rarely anyone was actually talking about football or footballers. Instead, the names behind the league - the owners who brought shares of the teams - stole the show. Sachin Tendulkar, Salman Khan, Sourav Ganguly, Ranbir Kapoor, and John Abraham were among the celebrities who brought stakes in some of the ISL franchises, while big business magnates in India including the Sun Group, Den Network, Videocon, and more provided the big financial backing. The closest the ISL got to a footballing relation was the involvement of Spanish Primera Liga side Atletico Madrid with the Kolkata franchise. About $200 million has been spent on the bidding of the eight teams.

The ISL is being launched by IMG Worldwide and Reliance - who together as IMG-Reliance have sponsorship stakes in several sports in India, including basketball - the All India Football Federation (AIFF), and Star India TV Network. The league is set to kick off in September this year and run for two months. The eight franchises are from Bengaluru, Delhi, Goa, Guwahati, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune. It's format has already closely mirrored the successful T20 Cricket league IPL, and will continue to do so in the future.

Football leagues have been in India for a long time, and so why is this one special? A National Football League started in 1997, but that folded up in 2007 and it gave way to I-League. which is running (not as successfully as expected) today.

So far, the ISL has been, for the lack of a better word in my opinion, a dumbed-down version of the sport from the point of view of football purists, like the IPL has been for true aficionados of cricket. Team owners will be more popular then most players and there will be a lot of annoying tamasha on the side (ever tried listening to IPL 'experts'? Yeesh!).

But here's the truth: in the long run, even the purists will be glad when they see that the money going into the league (and thus, into the sport in general) because of hype or celebrities. Like it or not, in India, you need hype to sell anything, and established themes like Cricket and/or Bollywood can be used to bring attention to non-so-established things (which include every other sport apart from Cricket).

In certain pockets in India (Bengal, the North-East, Kerala, Goa) Football is huge and can easily rival Cricket's popularity. But it is still relatively a poor sport unknown to the mainstream audience. The unconvincing performances of India's national teams is a major reason for this. Perhaps, playing in a big-money league among established foreign coaches and stars and the chance to finally be celebrated for their talents will give a ray of hope to Indian footballers and encourage more to take up the sport. If the popularity spills beyond ISL, football could finally begin to live up to its potential in India, and eventually, India's national team performances could see a major boost.

There are critics of the ISL, of course. The CEO of Churchill Brothers (Federation Cup winners) Valanka Alemao has said that, "This league will harm Indian football. There cannot be two leagues in the country which is struggling to qualify for the World Cup... We should have been talking about building a team rather than having such a league. India should have a 10-year vision to qualify for the World Cup."

Although he makes valid points, I don't fully agree with Alemao's opinion. If a sport is struggling in India, more money and interest poured into it can never be a bad thing. Yes, the AIFF needs to have a 10-year national vision, but that vision can be eased with the performances of Indian players at the ISL. There are also scheduling conflicts to solve, as the ISL currently clashes with FIFA dates and the I-League.

But count me among the camp of those excited for the ISL. I'm a football fan who unfortunately knows much more about players from Real Madrid and Liverpool than I know about players from clubs in my own country. Hundreds of thousands of football fans in India feel exactly the same way. A well-produced league that brings the game closer to mainstream India is sure to pay huge dividends.

On the day that the eight franchises and their owners were announced, Mike Dolan, the chairman of IMG, threw a curve-ball that sparked the interest of us over here at the 'India Basketball' camp. Dolan said that while the ISL has plans to grow aggressively and add 12 new franchises in the coming years, he also said that the model would be used to launch India's first professional basketball league next year. Remember, IMG-Reliance also hold marketing rights to basketball in India because of their partnership with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI). They have been in delayed talks to launch the pro league in India for several years now, but Dolan's public announcement with a set date (2015) right after the ISL's first season seems to be the surest sign yet that the basketball league which all hoop fans in the country have dreamed about for years could finally be here.

The benefits of finally having a professional basketball league in India are many. In an earlier column that I wrote for Ekalavyas, I noted that such a league would change everything for the sport in the country. India's best players would finally have an assured, steady contract from the sport that they excel in, and many more will be encouraged to start taking basketball seriously. The league would eventually generated jobs for several others connected to the game, including coaches, referees, scouts, trainers, broadcast personnel, and more. And it might help in accelerating the rise of new, better basketball infrastructure around the country. Eventually, the rise in interest, talent, and financial support could lead to better results for India's national basketball teams at the Asian or global stage.

Of course, Basketball is far less popular in India than Cricket or Football right now, but the same model as the IPL and ISL - at a smaller financial scale - could be successful here for the proposed Indian Basketball League.

And so what if it takes a little bit of tamasha, hype, or celebrity culture? So what if cricketers, Bollywood stars, or big name billionaires are needed to get it off the ground? The NBA in India has already understood that the majority of casual fans only show interest when there is a celebrity or too involved, and recent NBA-India events (like the NBA Jam) always ensure to have glamour and lifestyle infused with basketball.

Here is a possible list of things to expect in the Indian basketball league outside of basketball: corny cheerleaders, T-shirt throws, cameras zooming into the fringe Bollywood types (whattup Dino Morea!) on the sidelines, and too much attention on fashion or what they call 'glamour'. All of this already happens in the NBA anyways, but at least the high quality of basketball makes it all tolerable. This won't necessarily be the case in India. But if that is what takes to sell basketball to mainstream Indians, then so be it.

Purists can call all of this a 'dumbing down' of the sport, but in the long run, it might end up being the smartest thing that the organizers could have possibly done.

Perhaps, just like the ISL, on the day that the basketball league franchises are launched, the celebrity names might garner more neattention than the basketball players themselves. But, hopefully in the future, the real stars of the sport on the court will begin to speak and shine for themselves.

Indian Basketball needs role models to inspire the next generation

This article was first published in my column on Ekalavyas on March 10th, 2014. You can find the original post here.

TJ ‘Air India’ Sahi dunks over a taxi during a dunk contest as part of the 2011 Indian basketball All Star weekend at the Mastan YMCA Courts in Nagpada, Mumbai. 

I may call myself a die-hard basketball junkie now, but when I was a kid, I wanted to grow up and be Sachin Tendulkar.

I wasn’t good at cricket, but I played it a lot because everyone I knew played cricket. From the grassy fields of my school to the concrete gullie behind my house, we made everything our little pitch. Cricket was the sport, everything else was the alternative.

I had Sachin posters gracing the walls of my bedroom and Sachin’s face on my pencil-box for school. Like most casual fans of the sport in India, I only paid attention to cricket scores when Sachin was playing and turned off the moment he got out. Even as I grew older and lost interest in cricket, I could never switch off my fandom for the man we call ‘God’. I screamed with my friends when Sachin scored 200 against South Africa. I celebrated when his teammates hoisted him on their shoulders when they won the World Cup. I shed a tear watching his farewell speech.

It’s no secret that kids look up to athletes, and most of us – if we were sports fan growing up – were inspired by an athlete as a role model, whether it was Jordan or Ronaldo, Federer or Kobe. But if you were Indian, with a few exceptions it’s more than likely that the athlete was a cricketer. If not Sachin, it was Dhoni, or Ganguly, or Dravid, or one of the countless others.

Ever since cricket went from being a pastime to a religion in the early-to-mid-80s, India has rarely been able to produce idols in any other sport. Blame it on the lack of media attention, on the dysfunction of sporting bodies behind other athletes, or simply, a lack of success at the international level.

Although overshadowed by cricket, there have definitely been success stories to motivate and inspire across most other Indian sports. Over the last three decades, the likes of Leander Paes, Viswanathan Anand, Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt, Mahesh Bhupati, Dhanraj Pillai, Bhaichung Bhutia, PT Usha, Mary Kom, Anju Bobby George, Saina Nehwal, and many more have garnered national and international success and fame. While their respective sports might not make the Times of India front pages or spike TRPs on Indian sports channels as much as cricket, these sportsmen and women have at least charted a path to follow for aspiring young ‘alternative’ sportsmen and women.  

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find the same type of role model in basketball. The mainstream public in the country won’t be paying attention until an Indian player makes a mark at the international stage, to stand among the best in the world and hold their own. Outside of the niche basketball circles, the names of most of India’s finest basketball talents are unknown. The closest a truly famous person came to dribbling a basketball in India was back when Shahrukh Khan was playing trap-defense on a sari-clad Kajol in ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’.

But if you ask among those niche basketball circles in India, you will hear several names. You will hear of past greats like Ajmer Singh or Ram Kumar. You will be schooled on dominant players like Jayasankar Menon or Sozhasingarayer Robinson. You will catch up with those headlining the scenes in the present day, like Vishesh Bhriguvanshi, the explosive TJ Sahi, the Singh Sisters from Varanasi, or Anitha Paul Durai.

But the name you’re likely to hear more than any other is of the great Geethu Anna Jose. Jose has been the most dominant player in India for the last decade and is perhaps one of the greatest players we’ve ever had. She was the first Indian to play professionally in Australia, enjoyed a professional stint in Thailand, and was even given a trial by three WNBA teams in 2011. Domestically, the Kerala-born superstar has dominated nearly every tournament she took part in. She has been the lynchpin of India’s national women’s team and the only Indian player to match the talent and output of Asia’s finest.

Jose’s successes over the past decades brought her and her sport some much-needed attention, but her popularity never reached out to the masses like it deserved to. Jose has been a role model to serious basketball players in India, but to the common man or woman, she’s just another woman who could pass by any Indian airport or shopping mall without anyone raising an eyebrow in recognition, unless the eyebrow is being raised to remark on her height.

Indian basketball needs celebrities. We need our best players to be recognized on the street. We need fans to request photos with them. We need their accomplishments to be celebrated nationwide.

But for that to happen, our best players need to have some accomplishments first. The never-ending cycle of bad results leading to less exposure leading to loss of interest from young players and lack of funding and then to more bad results has continued for decades. The only way out of this ruthless cycle is an anomaly, a tangent of talent that can ignite national interest in the sport.

Luckily, when a country has over 1.2 billion people, that tangent might not be too far away. The challenge is to find it and nurture it so it can blossom into its full potential.

Four years ago, India discovered one such ‘needle in a haystack’ in the form of a 7-footed 14-year-old phenom straight out of a non-descript village in Punjab. Satnam Singh Bhamara was discovered while dominating the Youth and Junior national tournaments for Punjab and immediately picked out by IMG Reliance to be sent for expert training at the IMG Academy in Florida. Bhamara has been there since, honing his skills, and occasionally returning to India to take part in the bigger national tournaments or represent the Senior National team. While he has developed into a solid big man with flashes of brilliance, many fear that even for him, the discovery of talent might’ve been too little too late.

There has also been a rising number of non-resident Indians from the US, Canada, or elsewhere who have started to rise within American college or High School ranks and have offered a ray of hope to Indians back home. While these players may not have Indian nationality, and thus, can’t contribute to the national teams in India, they have been able to instil the belief that basketball excellence has little to do with ones DNA or race and more to do with one’s opportunities, training regimes, and of course, dedication.

At the top of the totem pole of these Indian-origin talents right now is Canadian-Indian Sim Bhullar. A 21-year-old, 7-5 giant, Bhullar currently NCAA Division 1 college ball for New Mexico State, and even made some waves with his performances leading up to the NCAA national tournament last year. If Bhullar can continue to develop in the next few years, he could have an outside shot at the NBA.

In last month’s column, I spoke about how a professional basketball league in India – whenever it does get launched – could revolutionize the sport and propel its popularity into a much higher gear. The league would also be a platform to create basketball heroes and heroines, idols who fans can look up to and relate to at the same time. Of course, the dream of every hoop fan in the country is to see an Indian name don an NBA jersey or the captain of the Indian national team hoist up a FIBA international trophy. That day isn’t here yet, but we are indeed getting closer. And when that day becomes today, the vicious cycle of ineptitude might finally be broken, and Indian basketball players might enjoy the star status that they deserve.

Now here’s a story. Three years ago, Mumbai’s famous Mastan YMCA courts in the Nagpada area began to play host to what then became an annual tradition, the Indian Basketball All Star Weekend. In 2011, the event’s organizers first brought together the best men and women players in India to the outdoor court for the two-day event, which included a dunk contest, three-point shootouts, and All Star games.

If you don’t know, Nagpada is a mostly-Muslim minority neighbourhood in India’s financial capital, an overcrowded bustling area of slumdogs in the city of millionaires. This iconic basketball court is where some of the nation’s finest have honed their craft and where poor young children mingle with international-level players. Nagpada is known for its kebabs, its crowds, its chawls, and its basketball. The All Star Weekend events were free for anyone to attend, and hundreds of local fans – mostly kids – sat on the floor courtside cheering through the exciting two days.

I was there covering the event in its first year, and TJ Sahi, one of India’s most popular basketball players, was participating in the dunk contest and the All Star game. Sahi is an explosive point guard who earned the nickname ‘Air India’ for his incredible athleticism and successes for India and Punjab.

Some of the Indian stars were at the court early on the first night, and while they waited for the competitions to begin, Sahi sat in a far corner separated from the rest of the players but surrounded by a dozen local kids. He was signing autographs and giving dribbling tips to the kids, who looked up in awe with admiration and respect. About an hour later, Sahi’s celebrity status was etched in the kids’ memories forever: he channelled his inner Blake Griffin for a spectacular dunk over a kali-peeli Mumbai taxi to win the Dunk Contest.

What happened in Mumbai that night – like what happens in Indian basketball events around the country on most nights – was barely noticed by those who didn’t attend and barely reported to the outside world. But it made a mark on those who were there and convinced at least a few of those youngsters to grow up and become the next TJ Sahi.

It was just another small example of a basketball role model being born in India. The moment was an untamed and totally desi glimpse of the future. Hopefully we can have many more moments like it in the road ahead, and those Sachin and Dhoni posters are eventually replaced by Indian faces motivating the next generation on the basketball court.  

Why a World Cup of Basketball would be the best idea ever

Recently, the NBA announced that they have been discussing a prospect with FIBA to launch a rebranded ‘World Cup of Basketball’. The rebranding would make the tournament look and feel very much like FIFA Football World Cup events. It would be the dream of every basketball player to play in this tournament. It would teach children about world geography.

Click here to read full article

The World's Most Marketable Athletes

Sports Pro, a British-based sports and sports-business magazine, recently compiled a list of the 50 most marketable athletes in the world. Marketable - mind you, not best - because not only is it difficult to compare athletes in different sports (Leo Messi or LeBron James?) but some of the most talented athletes in the world couldn't sell water to a well (read: Tim Duncan).

Anyways, it is an interesting list, and this is how Sports Pro describes how they got to their conclusions:

The list comprises the 50 athletes deemed by SportsPro to offer value for marketing money if signed today to a long-term global endorsement deal.
As the sports landscape has shifted over the last 12 months, so has the make-up of these unique rankings. Clearly, when evaluating ‘potential’, a degree of subjectivity is involved. Nevertheless, myriad resources were consulted and contacts nigh-on interrogated.
As was the case last year, the list has been designed and compiled to shed light on where the value might lie across the industry, and as a basis for discussion – both a snapshot of the moment and a three-year forecast.

The top ten are:
1. Usain Bolt
2. LeBron James
3. Cristiano Ronaldo
4. Lionel Messi
5. Lewis Hamilton
6. Carmelo Anthony
7. Sebastian Vettel
8. Michael Phelps
9. Caroline Wozniacki
10. Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Here are some thoughts from the rest of the list, which you can check out in its entirety here:

Usain Bolt is #1 - partly because he's the fastest man on Earth, and partly because his last name is Bolt.

LeBron James was #1 on this list last year - no really, he was. Of course that list was named before he became Public Enemy #1 in the eyes everyone on the planet expect Miami Heat bandwaggoners after his 'Decision'. Still, #2 ain't half-bad.

The most marketable basketball players, in order, are LeBron James (2), Carmelo Anthony (6), Yao Ming (11), Kobe Bryant (13), Dwyane Wade (15), Kevin Durant (30), Deron Williams (48).

Yes, you read that right, Kobe Bryant is 13th - below LeBron, Carmelo, and Yao (!!!). I know Carmelo's Knicks move has been taken into consideration, but then why no Amar'e on this list? Why is Deron Williams there?

Why no Derrick Rose on this list? He plays for formerly the most marketable team ever, right.

Shaq?

I'm surprised Kevin Durant, despite all his talent, made it to 30. Personality-wise, he's about as marketable as white bread.

There are two Indians on the top-50 list, both cricketers: MS Dhoni, at an impressive 10th, and Yuvraj Singh, who just makes the cut at 49.

Which brings me to my next question: Where the zark is Sachin Tendulkar? He's a friggin God, you know? If every second advertisement on television isn't considered good marketing, then I don't know what is. I know he's old, but this guy is going to remain India's sure shot salesmen for everything from Visa cards to chocolate milk for the next three decades, at least.

What is most impressive that is the variety in the top 50 - 18 different sports are represented, including 7 racing drivers, 7 NBA players, and 6 football players.

Wow, racing car drivers are popular.

Ronaldo and Messi remain virtually inseparable - whether in talent, output in goals, league standings, and now, marketability.

I wasn't exactly sure why tennis star Caroline Wozniacki is so marketable, but then I saw this and I shut my mouth.

In addition, Sports Pro is doing a poll of the world's most marketable retired athletes too, a list that is headlined by Michael Jordan and Zinedine Zidane

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.

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!

NBA on Ten Sports/Zee Sports

This isn't exactly breaking news, but if you have been following NBA broadcasting in India closely, a show called 'Real NBA' began a few months ago for NBA/basketball fans in India a couple of months ago.



From Indiantelevision.com:

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has entered into a deal with the Ten-Zee combine for a show called Real NBA. This is the first time that Ten Sports has entered into a deal with the NBA.
The 26-episode highlights, brought to fans across India in partnership with HP, is being aired till June every Monday on Ten Sports at 9 pm and on Zee Sports on Tuesday at 8:30 pm.
In addition to India, the programme is also being aired in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan and Afghanistan.

As mentioned above, Real NBA is a highlight-driven show, but also broadcasts some off-the-court news, such as Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor hanging out with Kobe. According to NBA.com/India, Real NBA "provides fans in India unique angles on the biggest stories in the NBA and exclusive access to the league’s players, coaches, executives, broadcasters and journalists."

The more the merrier - In addition to Fastbreak, NBA Action, and Live games on ESPN/STAR, it's good to see that the NBA is expanding to other networks in India like Ten-Zee to show more basketball highlights.

P.S.: There was no way I was going to write something today and not mention the cricket match last night.

200*.

I'm gonna use Larry Bird's quote about Michael Jordan and apply it to the greatest Indian alive: "That was God disguised as Sachin Tendulkar."

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.