Australians have taken a fancy for kabaddi after the PKL. (Source: File Photo)
With the English, the conversation starter is always weather. With Australians, it’s Footy – a world of their own where they play football with a fisted hand. Though, on a recent Sports Diplomacy program, the unexpected ice-breaker – along with expected polite enquiries about Steve Smith’s mea culpa, the ongoing Commonwealth Games and footy—was kabaddi. The sleeper-hit of India’s sportscape has by all accounts, blown away Aussie minds.
Surprisingly, one of the ripest sport-consuming markets and a population that aces several sports codes, is keen on learning from kabaddi, as it seeks to export its own home-grown behemoth Australian Football League, the Aussie-rules Footy. “Not many sports have gone from being an indigenous code to successfully being international. But Kabaddi did,” noted David Stevenson, GM China & India, AFL, who visited India last month, and witnessed first-hand kabaddi’s place in people’s mind and on TV.
“We’re proud of our indigenous sport. We have a huge immigration history and we’re hoping to pick from kabaddi the strategy that’ll help us grow beyond our shores,” he added.
Like India’s Bollywood, AFL in Australian sport was terribly self-sufficient, thriving on its domestic market and demand. Until recently, it did not really see any need to gain international validation; wizards happy with their Quidditch unknown to the muggles.
But after dipping its toes into China, four AFL clubs—Richmond, Essendon, Greater Western Sydney and Adelaide —had sent their officials in March on a fact-finding mission to India. They met the suits at Star Sports, the broadcasters responsible for turning kabaddi into a modern television-friendly sport and heard out how kabaddi was packaged— whipping up the traditionally rural sport to suit urban audience’ palates.
The AFL thought it had it all – an over-100 year old history and a loyal fan base that turn up at stadiums to the tune of 70,000 per game in a country that prefers their very own Footy over Olympic sports even during the CWG fortnight. But what it lacked was the global appeal of kabaddi – a colossal proselytising success, an enterprise that had carved a niche for itself in a cluttered market full of leagues piggybacking Olympic medals
A Victoria government trade mission that visited Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi and met up with SAI and Star Sports, exchanged notes on the bit-sized AFL (X) – based on the kabaddi experience in participation and player scouting, as well as repackaging. “AFL is our pride, especially for this 10-team sports-mad city Melbourne,” said Paul Faulkner who looks at outreach programs of one of Melbourne’s biggest clubs – Richmond. “But we want to share it with the world. The sport’s reached a point where stadia are full. Now we need to look beyond.”
A million eyeballs
6.9 million attended AFL at stadiums compared to 1 million for Big Bash league in 2016. The CWG Sunday – midpoint of the Gold Coast games—saw the whole might of Footy, hogging all the attention in Australia. At Richmond vs Hawthorn at MCG, a third umpire pressed a wrong button signalling a goal (6 points) instead of a Behind (1 point) and sent the whole country into a debate on the discredited score review system.
Some chuckled at how it was Footy’s Hand of God moment, given the disbelieving forward hadn’t seemed to get the last touch. That same day at Docklands Stadium, where another city institution Essendon played Western Bulldogs, the former’s dashing defender ended up biting an opponent— the nibble leading to wide-scale Man Bites Dog headlines. Gold Coast could well have been happening on the far side of Pluto for the Footy faithful. The buzz was not too different from how kabaddi has built its own solar system – player raids acquiring their own cults.
Interestingly, AFL has plans to enter the India market, a foray that will see them jostling for space with kabaddi. Sudip Chakraborty, a community officer at Essendon in Melbourne, has been the first mover in this enterprise. He fielded an Australian team at the last Kabaddi World Cup, comprising some ex-Footy blokes, who were trained for a few months in kabaddi and ended up beating Argentina. “We wanted to utilise the growth of kabaddi to spread AFL,” Sudip says.
He also helped Australia’s former captain Ricky Ponting to kick off a Footy program in Kolkata. That was during the time Ponting was with KKR. Training manuals were translated to Hindi / Punjabi cutting through the Australian Footy jargon – which is quite much.
While the usual electronic free leaf-flyers—Facebook was leveraged to connect with the migrants, teams in India were goaded into dreaming of one day playing for the AFL. As such, two Australian players—Ben McNiece (a regular at AFL) and Alex Morgan (trying his luck with a Melburnian team) are born to Indian mothers, but the real desi connect might be with Jalandhar, which produces a bulk of the balls used in AFL.
New Zealanders and the Irish (who play their Gaelic football) and most recently an American basketballer came into AFL as Category B rookies (sportspersons from other disciplines trained for AFL belatedly). But the plan for India is to grow the game organically—with some generous riffing off from Kabaddi.
The writer was in Australia on the invitation of Australian government’s department of foreign affairs.
The Footy Guide
AFL’s cricket connect and baseball dynamics
Footy began as a winter outdoor recreation for cricketers (that explains sharing of the cricket grounds and also corrects your impression – when the Aussie cricketers warm up with that oblong ball, it’s not rugby they’re playing, but Footy).
It’s supremely athletic, with tall agility seemingly commonplace on the ovals. Basketball sized athletes with athleticism of NFL’s wide receivers.
As cricket’s winter shadow, it has contrived to draw a long list of rules that are not immediately apparent and inevitably lead to verbal ruckusing and national debates that splits the country down the middle.
Melbourne has 10 of the 18 teams, but the sport’s spread to Perth and Sydney, and in the last few years Ricky Ponting’s Tasmania saw a proliferation from 6 clubs to 72. Melbourne declares itself a public holiday every last Saturday of September when it hosts the finals.
On an average, midfielders can run between 15-18 kms in a 2 hour game (of four 30-min terms).
The inaugural women’s AFL was a massive success, and the league sensed they needed to enter the fray soon after hockey, Women’s BBL and soccer took off.
AFL (X), though having not arrived on a suitable format, is being readied to be unleashed into the rest of the world – though there’s none of NBA’s gimmicks of wooing the Indian markets by air-dropping a tall bloke into the draft for buzz.
Several sprinters and basketball players vie for AFL spots and Gillong recently drafted a 1500m Olympian steeplechaser. The average salary is to the tune of 170,000 USD, with a handful making a million AUD.