Football gets rolling

The Indian Super League cannot be sustained just by the hyperbole of an opening ceremony. Soccer has become the second most-watched sport in India and it is not so only at the quadrennial World Cups. After years of planning and disappointment, the ISL has come up with what looks like a winning formula of Bollywood and cricket stars supporting the sport by buying into franchises, international soccer stars picked as marquee players, an Indian management firm with an international outlook and world-class television coverage by the main cricket broadcaster.

Indian cricket’s finest, like the retired Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, and present-day stars like Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli, have hit upon a sporting investment that may not fetch them big bucks but will satisfy their urge to be relevant as icons who can help promote pro sport after having benefited themselves from cricket’s trend-setting Indian Premier League. From here, it is a matter of keeping the ball rolling.

The standard of play was far higher in the opening game than what has been seen in Indian football as yet. Gone is the snail’s pace at which our players moved. Of course, there is a long way to go to improve Indian soccer, now ranked a lowly 158 in the world and 30 in the region. The journey from there to the last 32 for a place in the World Cup is a very distant dream. In that sense, the ISL represents only a small step in a very long journey. But a start has been made.