Basketball Needs a Hero

Basketball in India has yet to take-off. Although I have been a sports buff for my 22 years alive, my experience as a sports journalist has been relatively small. I seldom witness any basketball news in India, and I am not talking about the coverage of the NBA, but the sport of basketball as a whole in India.

As a big fan of the game, my appetite for basketball was filled by the NBA, and maybe that’s the reason why I never realized or observed the lack of basketball coverage in India; such negligence is rampant in India. Sports like football (soccer), tennis and basketball face stiff competition from global teams or formats, which become major hindrances for them grow in India. Fanatics would rather follow a Manchester United or Real Madrid rather than local clubs, whose matches witness empty stadiums and stale media coverage.

This is the same case with basketball. The number of followers for the LA Lakers or Chicago Bulls increases with each passing day, but little is known about basketball players in India. Even I know very little about the history of basketball in India! Now let’s play the blame-game for this negligence. Who is responsible for the current state of basketball in India: the media, the authorities, the players or the fans? For me, each one of them must share the burden of blame.

Let’s start with the players. Every sport in the world is carried by its players, whose performance lifts the game and takes it to all the fans. In the case of basketball in India, players are yet to prove their mettle in the sport and thus the low fan following. The authorities also have take responsibility for the situation, since they have done little to promote the sport at-large.

The infrastructure is not the problem, since almost every school now has a basketball court at its disposal. The raw talent is buzzing and waiting to be tapped, but the loopholes are countless. The media on its part focuses on sending reporters to cover NBA matches (which is not bad), but they also need to send reporters to the national championships and other competitions.

It must be understood that in the US, the NCAA championships hold as much prominence and attract as much of a fan following as the NBA. It also forms the bank deposit for the NBA draft and glorifies the upcoming talent. India lacks a similarly in-depth selection system. These elements mentioned above, combined together, hinder the growth of basketball in India.

In India, heroes take sports to a whole new level. For cricket it was Sachin Tendulkar, for tennis it was Leander Paes, for shooting it was Abhinav Bindra. For basketball to really take-off, it needs a national legend to identity with, in the mean time its fans still await a Tendulkar, Paes or Bindra.

By Sahil Sharma