It's just not cricket
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:24 am
The latest attempt by football to challenge cricket’s dominance in India starts today with the “opening ceremony” and first game in the Indian Super League. It has almost happened in previous years, but it looks like it will actually happen this time. It is following what seems to be the usual format for sport in India these days; big companies/wealthy individuals bid for a franchise, there is an American Football style draft to formulate the squads and then the league is completed in a fairly short period of time with games happening every day. In recent years, they have followed this format for badminton, hockey and, er, kabbadi. They’re going to do a pan-Asia league in tennis as well in a couple of months. And not forgetting the big daddy of them all – the IPL in cricket.
Whether this will lead to football gaining any popularity here in India is not clear. Interest in football is concentrated in a few areas of India – Calcutta and the North Eastern states, Goa and Kerala. There is a regular domestic league – the I-League – but the standard is pretty poor and nobody much watches it. The Indian national team is fairly feckless, presumably hampered by the organisational problems that afflict much of sport in this country. There are not really any stand-out players, but there are a couple of tremendously named players – a goalkeeper called Shilton Paul and a midfielder called Climax Lawrence.
Anyhow, there are quite a few Bolton connections in the upcoming league; Bernard Mendy will be running around aimlessly with Chennaiyin FC; Trevor Morgan will be a coach working under David Calamity James at Kerala Blasters; Peter Reid has been brushing up on his swearwords in Hindi to coach Mumbai City – among his players at Mumbai will be Andre Moritz and Nicolas Anelka.
Other foreign players/coaches signed up for the league include Luis Garcia. Mickael Silvestre (he was a pundit, along with the Peters Crouch and Shilton, on Indian TV for the recent World Cup), Marco Materazzi, Zico (the real one, not Tony Kelly), Robert Pires, bookies favourite - Michael Chopra, Iain Hume (didn’t he score for that horrible Birkenhead rabble against Bolton in one of those cup games?), Freddie Ljungberg, Joan Capdevila, Kostas Katsouranis and David Trezeguet.
The team I shall get to see is Delhi Dynamos (given all this franchise based sport in India, there is a serious concern about running out of suitable team names beginning with D for Delhi teams). Watching the Dynamos, I shall be treated to a forward line of Morten Skoubo (2 games on loan at West Brom in 2004), Mads Junker (one goal for Denmark in 2010), and at a somewhat higher level to the previous two – Alessandro Del Piero.
I don’t know what the quality will be like; for every “marquee signing” like Anelka and Del Piero, there will be a load of mediocre players to make up the numbers. It will be interesting to see if the league is just a one-off or has some staying power.
Whether this will lead to football gaining any popularity here in India is not clear. Interest in football is concentrated in a few areas of India – Calcutta and the North Eastern states, Goa and Kerala. There is a regular domestic league – the I-League – but the standard is pretty poor and nobody much watches it. The Indian national team is fairly feckless, presumably hampered by the organisational problems that afflict much of sport in this country. There are not really any stand-out players, but there are a couple of tremendously named players – a goalkeeper called Shilton Paul and a midfielder called Climax Lawrence.
Anyhow, there are quite a few Bolton connections in the upcoming league; Bernard Mendy will be running around aimlessly with Chennaiyin FC; Trevor Morgan will be a coach working under David Calamity James at Kerala Blasters; Peter Reid has been brushing up on his swearwords in Hindi to coach Mumbai City – among his players at Mumbai will be Andre Moritz and Nicolas Anelka.
Other foreign players/coaches signed up for the league include Luis Garcia. Mickael Silvestre (he was a pundit, along with the Peters Crouch and Shilton, on Indian TV for the recent World Cup), Marco Materazzi, Zico (the real one, not Tony Kelly), Robert Pires, bookies favourite - Michael Chopra, Iain Hume (didn’t he score for that horrible Birkenhead rabble against Bolton in one of those cup games?), Freddie Ljungberg, Joan Capdevila, Kostas Katsouranis and David Trezeguet.
The team I shall get to see is Delhi Dynamos (given all this franchise based sport in India, there is a serious concern about running out of suitable team names beginning with D for Delhi teams). Watching the Dynamos, I shall be treated to a forward line of Morten Skoubo (2 games on loan at West Brom in 2004), Mads Junker (one goal for Denmark in 2010), and at a somewhat higher level to the previous two – Alessandro Del Piero.
I don’t know what the quality will be like; for every “marquee signing” like Anelka and Del Piero, there will be a load of mediocre players to make up the numbers. It will be interesting to see if the league is just a one-off or has some staying power.
