New Delhi, July 14
The Basketball Federation of India’s (BFI) plans to hold a National League, on the lines of cricket, football and volleyball, have come unstuck due to lack of sponsorship support. A sport like basketball has hardly any takers due to its limited appeal in the country, though the sport is extremely popular among school and college-going boys and girls.
Some of the prestigious schools and colleges in Delhi like Mother’s International School, Modern School, Delhi Public School, Hindu College and St. Stephen’s boast of very good basketball teams. These schools and colleges are the life-lines of the sport in Delhi, but still, in the absence of institutional and corporate support, the sport faces a bleak future.
Delhi also conducts a couple of prestigious basketball tournaments like the Master Prithvi Nath Tournament. Yet, the sport is struggling to dig its feet in the Capital, which used to very popular once upon a time.
Even the Sports Authority of India (SAI) seems to have given basketball the cold shoulder as it did nothing much when the basketball courts at the National Stadium, the hub of the sport in the Capital, was taken over to create a parking lot. The SAI has not bothered to give an alternate site to relocate the basketball courts, leaving chief coach K K Chansoria a crestfallen man.
Chansoria had taken diligent care to nurture the basketball courts at the National Stadium, but after the courts were demolished to give way for the parking lot, the veteran coach finds himself without a proper “abode”. This development is perhaps a blessing in disguise, as the coach is now able to give focussed attention to the national team, of which he is the chief coach. That the national team has made a vast improvement under Chansoria’s guidance was all too evident in the recently concluded Asia Middle Asia Zone qualifying round for the 22nd Asian Confederation basketball Championship to be held in China in September.
India not only qualified for the ABC Championship finals, but also put up a brilliant show in the last match of the round-robin league against a far superior Uzbekistan, before losing the match by a narrow margin of nine points.
It was a match India should have won, but the Uzbeks used their height, talent and experience to outwit the hosts, in the last quarter, to emerge victorious. But the Indians were not disgraced.
They gave the tie their best shot, before crashing at the final hurdle.
The match was significant on another count—the
exposure in the depth of young talent. The performances of the younger players in the team have gladdened the hearts of the connoisseurs of the game as India finally seem to have found the talent to replace veterans like Parminder Singh, who is on the final leg of his playing career, age having taken a toll on his agility.
But the youngsters need exposure and fine-tuning for which sponsorship is an inevitable catalyst.
But in a cricket-crazy country like India, nothing sells except cricket, and other sports and games like basketball have very few takers. It’s a depressing scenario, which calls for urgent correction.
The large number of school and college children who turned up to watch the matches in the Asia Middle Asia Zone qualifying round at the Talkatora indoor stadium in New Delhi last week was an encouraging sign, as the sport seems to enjoy popularity at the grass-root level. It’s a question of harnessing the talent, by making the sport a lot more popular among people at large, a la cricket. It’s a far-fetched dream as cricket has become an obsession in the country at the cost of other sports.
Basketball Federation of India secretary-general Harish Sharma has been doing his best to uplift the game, using his personal clout, but he can only do so much, without big sponsors coming forward to take care of the sport.
Till then, basketball, for that matter all other sports, except cricket, will find the going tough in the country.
