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Ultimate Kho Kho's Chief Operating Officer (COO) Vishal Sharma recently opened up about the possible expansion of UKK in 2024. Six teams have participated in the two seasons of the tournament played so far.
Odisha Juggernauts won the inaugural season, while Gujarat Giants recently became the new champions of UKK. In an exclusive chat with Sportskeeda, Vishal Sharma talked about the possibility of adding new teams to UKK this year.
He also shed light on the various challenges faced by the operations team as far as organizing UKK matches is concerned. Here are the excerpts:
Excerpts from Vishal Sharma's exclusive interview with Sportskeeda
Q. First of all, how difficult it was for you as COO to move UKK from Pune to Cuttack?
UKK COO Vishal Sharma: Operationally if you ask me, so to be honest, we are grateful to first to Odisha government for giving us the opportunity to come to Odisha and host the event in Odisha because in the last 10 years if you see, we can call it a capital of sports. So, there they gave us an opportunity. We are thankful to them.
And if you ask me operationally, yes we had to set up a new venue. A new sport has its own challenges. Our sport does not have a lot of props to carry, but the main thing is the pole. When we are getting into the closed arenas with sports that are being played in open fields, the first thing comes where to fix the pole.
To get the approval to get the pole fixed is something that sounds very small problem, but sometimes it change the cities also. Like there are some grounds where they are not giving the permission due to whatever reasons because they have a court over here, court has already been laid or something, or maybe they have the stadium on the first floor because for digging, we need at least two feet.
So for the operational part, we have to see first whether the stadium is available and the second part is whether they would allow us to dig a hole for the pole. So, that was the first thing. Once we were sure of it, the second part is that operationally, to be honest these are the regular challenges that we face. But there is no major challenge.
But yes, operationally if you say step by step, I can tell you step by step that first we look at the venues. And then once the venue is there, we are sure of the venue, side by side we work on how to get the players onboard because that's also a part of arranging the league.
Once we are sure of doing a league, then we request to the Federation side by side to start getting the shortlisted players. So once the players are there, then we get into the draft part, then once the event starts before that, we have to get everyoe onboard.
Like your event agency, the broadcaster, our own team, because eventually what we see on TV is the hard work of everyone for the last 15 days they put behind the scene, and then it comes on TV on day one.
Q. So now, I was talking to Tenzing Niyogi (CEO of UKK) and he said there is a probability of new teams joining. In terms of operations, how big of a challenge will it be?
UKK COO Vishal Sharma: See, for any sport, it is good to have a longer duration. If a sport is new and it is shown once in a year, and no matter how much efforts we make, as a viewer, if you are being shown something after a year, the probability of remembering the sport is little low.
But if the sport happens continuously, like you have become a fan of the sport and you want to view it, and it is not available for 11 months, so there is a larger possibility that you may not, because there are so many options which are there. So, that's basically the theoretical answer of it.
Practically if you ask me, the first challenge we have is the availiability of the broadcaster. That's the biggest challenge because cricket is throughout the year, and we generally do not want to clash with any cricket property because we are completely new, and we prefer not to.
The biggest challenge that comes is to find a window between two cricket series, and we will be lucky if we can get two or three months window. That won't be easy. Right now, the number of teams is six, we have 30 plus four matches being played. Once we have eight teams, the number will go up to 56 plus four.
Even if we do two matches per day with a slight break, it comes around to five weeks. To get a five-week window, it will be a challenge, but from the game point of view, no doubt, it will be fabulous because there are a lot of parties who are interested to come onboard to be a part of the thing, and we have a good talent onboard.
This will give a good opportunity to the players also. Right now, we have six teams, one team there are 12 players. So, once the number of teams grow, it will be better for the overall sport.
Q. You mentioned how you want to avoid cricket as far as possible in the UKK window, but are you fine clashing with kabaddi? This entire season has clashed with PKL because they are also similar Indian sports.
UKK COO Vishal Sharma: We wish to have a clear window, but we are not that lucky that we can always get the window. Because of COVID two years ago, the complete sporting window has completely changed. A lot of events which were pushed, there is no clarity of which event is being scheduled when.
As you rightly said, why to clash with kabaddi. Obviously, we would not like to clash with kabaddi. They are doing great in their area. We have started really well and we have a long plan. Viewer can watch only one sport. When cricket is not there, kabaddi is there, and it is the same viewer. We didn't have an idea of the other league's window. We have to announce six months before and that's how we planned.
We didn't want to delay it. Generally, the sport you mentioned, the league happens in July. So we decided to do it in December, regardless of whether they are doing it or not.
Q. How challenging is it for you to provide data of players to UKK franchises because scoring in other Kho Kho tournaments may not be proper?
UKK COO Vishal Sharma: Data capturing is done properly at the national level and the state championship level, but yes, that has not become digitalized yet. The federation is working on a project, where they are trying to ensure that the data is in one place.
I think the federation has the data of various tournaments happening at the district level. Through that data, they conduct the Nationals. We get the entire data of the nationals . The good part is that our partner franchise send their representatives to nationals so that they can see the talent right there.
