View: Don’t get off your seats, make India e-sport champs!

This may seem rich coming from me, but the days when the only people sitting in front of screens involved in anything related to sports were viewers following a sport are now in the past. These days, even as sports viewerships continue to be on the rise, actual players also find themselves sitting in front of screens playing e-sports and online games. Online skill gaming, given India’s internet and mobile phone penetration today, is a full-fledged sport gaining currency and proficiency on the world gaming stage. And on India’s, too.

India has already earned an international e-sports medal. In the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games in Indonesia, where e-sports was featured as a demonstration sport (medals won but not counted in the overall tally), Hyderabad’s Tirth Mehta won the bronze medal in Hearthstone, a digital collectible card game. Many others are raring to go with their mobiles and consoles in various tournaments across the world.

At the upcoming 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games in China, scheduled for September 10-25, eight e-sport medals – PUBG (Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds) Mobile, Dota (Defense of the Ancients) 2, Hearthstone, League of Legends, FIFA, Street Fighter V, Arena of Valor, and Dream of the Three Kingdoms 2 – and two demonstration events – AESF Robot Masters and AESF VR Sports – are up for grabs. (Indian gamers will be able to qualify for the event using Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), since the original PUBG mobile platform is banned in the country.)

For India to pull out all the stops in Hangzhou, support is needed. In tennis, I’ve seen growth in infrastructure, formalisation of national associations, and state support resulting in the growth of the sport, and consequently success. For e-sports, central and state governments should make the requisite infrastructure available, provide a well-oiled support system, allowing e-athletes to focus solely on their performance, and not worry about managing logistics and navigating other challenges.

The time is ripe for India to invest in its e-sports infrastructure and make the country a hub for not just professional e-athletes but also for game-providers. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics held last year, five e-sport events were featured in the (non-medal event) Olympic Virtual Series: baseball, cycling, rowing, sailing and motor sport. It won’t be long till e-sports becomes an Olympic sport too.

e-Sports also has a huge potential to support ancillary opportunities related to game development and publication such as live streaming. Traditional sports such as chess – recently in the headlines thanks to the fabulous victory of 16-year-old Indian grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa beating World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen at the online Airthings Masters rapid chess tournament – have benefited tremendously from the new platform. During the multiple Covid lockdowns over the last two years, I avidly followed live streams, and particularly enjoyed post-match shenanigans that included players joining the streams to give their fresh off-the-ring assessments.

The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) partnered with game developer Mobile Premier League (MPL) to launch a virtual skeet event- the shooting sport in which a clay target is thrown from a trap to simulate the flight of a bird – in accordance with the International Shooting Sport Federation’s (ISSF) regulations. As someone who has grown up playing video games, I look forward to being back on the tennis court – this time virtually.

India has all the ingredients required for it to be a hub for skilled esports athletes. For any sport to be compelling for both the athletes and viewers, it is essential that it meets certain marks such as endurance and skills. With most young adults in the country interacting with their mobile phones on a regular basis, I urge them to use their time to develop their gaming skills and become world-beating e-athletes. Whether it’s the real tennis court or the virtual one, there is nothing that bears winning, that too on a world stage.

The writer won the tennis men’s singles bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.