ADVENTURE & WILDLIFE
He takes an informed guess by looking at the data from AIPA:
In June 2015, the 3rd National Tournament had 175 players from 8 states( each state bringing 2 teams of 10 players). Sunil estimates that each state would likely be picking from a pool of 60 competitive players. This means 480( 60 x 8) players could be considered competitive. He adds a“ floating” amount of 500, bringing the tally to 1,000.
Another 500 or so individuals are curious players who take part in events AIPA conducts weekly or monthly. Then considering interest built from social media or TV appearances, Sunil reaches a population of around 50,000 Indians who at least know of pickleball.
Sunil believes many people would love to play the sport if the opportunity was open to them, but he still has a ways to go before making this a reality all across India.
Indian Response to Pickleball We always love hearing about people’ s initial reactions to Pickleball, so we asked Sunil about his experience sharing the game.
“ It’ s very exciting to watch people’ s first reactions. Most don’ t believe they’ re able to play a sport so effortlessly. They find it’ s a good stress buster and full of fun. It also demystifies the taboo about sports— I’ ve seen people aged 40 + who have never held a racquet or entered a sports ground in their lives, yet when they take their first shot playing Pickleball they feel overjoyed. Like they’ ve been reborn.”
Another happy story follows, as Sunil recounts a time when he took the game to the streets of the city on a Sunday morning.
“ One thing is for certain, once people start playing, they don’ t want to stop! One day when we were doing a demo on the city streets we had only one court and 2 hours to play. Many people were waiting for their turn to experiment, but when a veteran politician stopped by we allowed him to play a bit longer than usual. After he’ d been playing for a while the gentleman suddenly shouted,‘ Someone please snatch this paddle from my hand or I’ ll never leave the court!’”
Clearly pickleball has a broad appeal, so we were also curious how kids felt about pickleball and whether or not it was easy to get the game into schools. Despite complications, Sunil sounded determined!
Pickleball in Indian Schools“ Convincing schools to offer pickleball is one of the most difficult tasks. As far as sports go, everyone is dreaming of scholarships based around cricket. To make matters harder, this viewpoint is pushed by school associations and the government since it’ s an Olympic sport that might bring a medal for the country.”
“ Still, I would say the main deterrent to pickleball is the population’ s mindset. Sports in general rank low on everyone’ s priority list( except for the dedication to cricket), and most people are budget-conscious
Vol 1 | Issue 5-6 | Nov 16- Jan 17 101