How the IPTL and CTL can help Indian tennis
The Indian Premier League has paved the way for many mini-leagues of various sports to take place in the country over the years. We have had the Hockey India League (HIL), the Pro Kabbadi league, the Indian Badminton League and the Indian Super League ( football ) which is currently underway. Its tennis’s turn now! We have the Champions Tennis League (CTL) coming up in November and the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) in December.
The nation is going to see a host of tennis superstars ( both retired and current ) over the next two months with the likes of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Serena and Venus Williams, David Ferrer, Pete Sampras, Pat Cash,and many others playing in one of the two tournaments.
Star Sports will help in popularising the sport
The IPTL and CTL are in an effort to continue a trend of popularising sports other than cricket in India. The Pro Kabaddi league saw massive success, and Mahesh Bhupathi, the founder of IPTL is sure that their league would have a bigger amount of success in India. Star Sports has acquired the rights to air the IPTL. This is a big boost for them as Star Sports has a good network strength and high TRP rating for most of their shows.
“Given their network strength and their commitment to growing sport in the country, our decision to partner with them was an easy one. We’re confident that the IPTL’s quicker and more exciting format, bundled with Star Sports’ strength in packaging and promotion will lend greatly to delivering a great viewing experience to sports fans.” said Bhupathi.
How the IPTL and CTL could help Indian Tennis
India has had a host of doubles superstars over the past many years, but there has not been a singles sucess for India since 1996, when Laender Paes had won the bronze medal in the Atlanta Olympics. He moved on to doubles as well. Therefore, the current generation grow up with the perception that there wouold be more success in doubles for them, and not in singles. These tournaments, both the CTL and IPTL could inspire the Indian youngsters to take up the singles game as both the tournaments are focussing more on singles rather than doubles.
One of the main aims of both the IPTL and the CTL is to popularise tennis in the country. By popularising the sport, it could pave the way for a lot more tennis academies with good training facilities and top quality coaches to open up in the country. India has a very small amount of academies, with poor facilities as of now, which is one of the reasons as to why a lot of youngsters do not take up the sport, or, if they do, they are forced to play doubles in many of those academies because of the shortage of courts. By opening more academies, there would be more number of courts, good facilities with coaches, and hence, more number of youngsters taking up the sport.
Sports like cricket have a lot of government backing in India and there are a lot of places which even provide free training to youngsters. This is desperately needed in tennis as well, since it is an expensive sport to be a part of. The success of the IPTL and the CTL could see the popularity of tennis growing in India and hopefully the government opening up training academies which provide free training and supplies for those people who cannot afford it.
The IPTL and the CTL would remind everyone of the amount of success which is available in tennis. There are many Indians who grow up with the perception that cricket is the only sport which could see success. After seeing the world’s best in action over the next two months, this perception could be changed, and we could see a lot more people taking up tennis in the future.
India’s success in non cricketing sports is slowly growing and we hope to see the next Singles Indian tennis champion in the upcoming years.