Indian Basketball: If School Leagues Exist, Can Colleges Be Far Behind?

A year ago, Mr. Harish Sharma (Secretary General, BFI) remarked, “We are definitely looking for a school league in New Delhi and a college league in Chennai. We may increase the number of cities if the response to our request to the sponsors/marketing people requires it.”

Since then we’ve had inter-school basketball leagues organized in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai by the BFI in partnership with IMG Reliance. A college league is said to be in the pipeline. And the third step would be a full-fledged professional league. Unlike schools however, college students can take the initiative to organize tournaments on their own. Numerous colleges have Annual Sports Fests, and basketball is a popular game of choice in many places.

Our culture smiles broadly on academic excellence, and excellence in sports is just seen as a cherry on top. It’s well and good if you can play, but you’d better be scoring high marks in all your subjects. In the USA, sports are marketed heavily and provide a plethora of opportunities for kids to consider making a career for themselves in them. Parents actively encourage their kids to engage in sports. When Allen Iverson’s mother saw him as a newborn she said, “They bought in this kid with long arms, and I said to myself, ‘Oh my goodness I got me a ballplayer.’” In the USA, the NCAA organizes college basketball and it’s a premier grooming ground for budding NBA talent. They get extensive TV coverage and March Madness is one of the country’s most prominent sporting events.

It’s not the same in India. Actually, it’s the exact opposite. As a scene in 3 Idiots (a movie) showed, a kid’s fate as an engineer was sealed before his feet touched the ground. But towards the end of that movie, the dean, an archetype of old school, tells his grandson that it’s cool if he wants to be a football player. Things are changing these days.

While sports may not be a realistic and viable career goal for kids to aspire to, it’s nice if being good at sports can get you places. Any sportsperson can tell you the influence the game has had in their lives. They way it taught them the importance of hard work and persistence, and helped them to develop a character which considers it a sin to cut corners. Educational institutes recognize this, and encourage kids to indulge in sports by having a provision for admission on merit of excellence in sports.

Colleges which have such provisions usually don’t stop at admitting deserving sportspeople. They also organize a lot of sports tournaments throughout the year. These tournaments are usually between colleges, within the departments of a college or inter-university. Volunteer students are delegated the task of organizing tournaments. This also allows them to gain experience in event management.

Colleges are concerned about their image. Newspapers are inundated with admission notices and ads. One of the best forms of publicity a college can hope to generate is by organizing competitions and events which involve other institutes and organizations. Sports events are one way to go.

There are many organizations which conduct inter-school and inter-college tournaments in India. One such is PBA Chennai, headed by Jayasankar Menon and his wife Prasanna Jayasankar (both have captained the Indian basketball team). They, along with other basketball enthusiasts, have successfully organized coaching camps for the past 10 years, in addition to the school and college tournaments.

PBA Tourney 2010

Chennai has recently seen the launch of the Pro League Basketball Academy. This league will organize corporate, school and college level leagues in addition to club tournaments. They hope to scout talent based on the performance in these leagues, and train the selected players to take their game to the next level.

People have remarked that while NBA basketball is obviously better than the NCAA, the college players always play with a reckless abandon. This doesn’t always pay dividends at the professional level but it’s unquestionably entertaining to watch. Even in India, a college league would be easier to market than a school league. And if school leagues have already come into being, can colleges really be far behind?