IPL chairman Arun Dhumal: Strong talent pool will improve franchise-based leagues in India

At Sportstar’s Business of Sports Summit at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on Friday, the spotlight fell on how India’s vast talent pool has shaped the country’s leagues, with cricket leading the way and other sports seeking to catch up.

Arun Dhumal, chairman of the Indian Premier League, set the tone by tracing the tournament’s roots back to India’s seminal cricketing moment. “We think of the IPL starting in 2008. I think that the 1983 World Cup win was the transforming event that led to the forward integration of players. We had Kapil Dev, then Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and now Shubman Gill. That flow continued, and the kind of leadership that the BCCI had allowed that to happen,” he said during a panel discussion titled India in a League of Its Own – How India Shapes Global Sport, moderated by K.C. Vijaya Kumar, Sports Editor, The Hindu.

For Dhumal, the IPL’s strength lies in the conveyor belt of domestic talent. “The BCCI organises more than 2,000 games a year, which leads to the strong pool. That is what other sports need to do, create that talent pool,” he noted.

Anupam Goswami, Business Head of Mashal Sport and League Commissioner of the Pro Kabaddi League, underlined that the challenge for other sports is to scale up competitive structures. “The amount of competition, when you go into leagues as a business, the challenge will be to scale up on the ground. My sport has to be less than one-tenth in terms of competition at the ground level; that’s the same with almost every other sport,” he said. “The scale needs to go up. The fans have to be focused on. The level of competition, it has to be the best that the sport offers. And then it has to come together in terms of administration.”

For the NBA in India, the focus is firmly on nurturing the grassroots. Rajah Chaudhary, Head of Strategy, Asia Pac & Country Head, India at NBA, pointed out that while basketball is popular in schools, the absence of a professional pathway has been a hurdle. “We are in a very different situation than most other sports. The NBA is niche, but basketball is not, at least in India. It is popular at the school level. Unfortunately, we’ve not had a sustainable league in the country. Grassroots is crucial, hence. That is our focus. We want 13-14 year olds to pick up a basketball,” he said.

Offering a complementary perspective, Vita Dani, Chairperson of Ultimate Table Tennis and Co-Owner of Chennaiyin FC, stressed that the growth of Indian sport depends on collective strength rather than competition between disciplines. “For us to be successful, multiple sports have to co-exist. We need not compete. The new generation has to be involved in a sport, any sport. That is the only way we can create talent. It is not only a top-down approach that the leagues bring to the table. Cricket is a success because it is rooted in the community. If we can do that with other sports, we will become a sporting nation.”

Making the sport better

A well-established sporting league also often leads to better competition even at the international level. “When we started the UTT six years back, we had just two players in the top 100. Today, we have 13. And this is just with the effort of one person. If we do this across the country with multiple stakeholders, we would talk a lot more about sucess and having talent,” Dani said.

Chaudhary and Goswami pointed out instances of improvement from their respective sports.

“For PKL, the challenge was to drive the growth of the sport. Our strength was that kabaddi was a medal discipline at Asian Games. When Iran beat India at the Asian Games in 2018, many said it was because of PKL. Iran has a lot of players featuring in our league. The fundamental aspect of a league is to have the best the sport has to offer. PKL has done that and had an impact on the quality of players,” said Goswami.

Chaudhary highlighted how the rise of international players in the NBA has propelled forward not just the league but the game across the globe. “The rest of the world has caught up with the NBA, the WNBA and the international level. The US used to be so dominant, which can be tied back to the NBA. Twenty-five per cent of NBA is now international players compared to 20-30 years back,” Chaudhary said.

Building fanbases

A by-product of booming franchise-based leagues has been vibrant fanbases which support their teams, and eventually the sport, with passion. IPL leads the race here. “I compliment all the franchises for their fan bases. The turnouts at the stadium across the seasons have been great. You could go to a game in Delhi and see people wearing yellow. These icons have been created due to the passion they have shown on the field, and the franchises have done well to be able to hold onto that,” Dhumal said.

“Chennai fans are the best. It does not matter what the sport is, it is a fanbase created with regional affinity, and it will continue to be so. The stronger the franchise, the stronger the fanbase. That is the way forward. When we started in football, I did not see a football culture in Tamil Nadu. But with time, we have been able to create a fanbase,” Dani added.

Published on Sep 12, 2025