By: Dr. Mohammad Aleem, Editor-ICN Group
NEW DELHI: India is a great treasure trove of young talents, either it is from the games, films, science and literature of any other fields.
This coming February, 2019, a mega sport event is going to be organized for the ‘sons of the soil’, youngsters from the Rural India, The Kisan Cricket League.
The event will introduce a fresh short format cricket tournament and is first of its kind where ones only qualifications are ‘Are you a Villager between 17-24 years & are you an aspiring Cricket Player’!
Kisan Cricket League -The Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Cup of Hope will start on 20th February 2019 and end on 20th March 2019, a day before the festival of colors – Holi.
Atul Pandey, the organizer of the event calls it a tribute to one of India’s favorite son, the iconic representation of poise and humility – Late Prime Minister Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri and is ever thankful to his son, Shri Anil Shastri & the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial for allowing the winners’ Cup to be named after Shastri ji. More than 5 decades after his untimely death, the slogan ‘Jai Jawaan – jai Kisaan’ (Long Live Youths-Long Live Farmers) still echoes.
He adds that the Kisan Cricket will have 8 teams – Mighty Himalyans, Frontier Gabroos, Awadhi Brothers, Eastern Eagles, Western Tharyans, Oruvan Thalaivas, Sahyadri Rangers and a special team for the tribal youngsters, The Birsa Boys.
The matches will be organized in 8 Non-Metro Cities across India and will be telecast live on one of the principal sports broadcasters in Indian footprint. Additionally, 2 more broadcasters are being roped on for the Kisan Cricket. The entire event consists of 4 more contests – The Fan of the Season for each team, Singers of Team Anthems of all teams plus event anthem, Commentators in 10-12 Indian Languages and Presenters of Studio Shows in at least 9 languages. The contests will be lunched on specially built web applications before finally; the top performers will fight it out in the studio in front of judges. It is expected that cumulatively more than 2, 00,000 people will participate in the contests. Atul withholds from calling Kisan Cricket a cricket league, ‘it’s a small initiative towards Rural India – Digital Sports & Entertainment Ecosystem’.
‘There are thousands of District Panchayats in India and we expect at least registrations from each of them, it will be the first time that about 75000 youngsters will register and video audition as the first step towards selection process. About 5000 of these boys will be called for selection trials that will be conducted under the supervision of Chennai’s Sandeep Raju who is involved with many major Indian and international cricket leagues for more than a decade. The trials will be at about 10 centers all over India’. ‘200 top players will be chosen in different categories – batsmen, fast bowlers, spinners, wicket keepers and guess what, even specialist fielders’. ‘Every year about top 40 cricketers will be offered 1-year package to continue playing and polishing their skills further’.
‘We hope to form a self-sustaining model for aspiring cricketers and entertainment professionals, its kind of a talent hunt without being judged or mocked. You progress as per your merit, and if you fail, you can always come back better prepared the next year. Web is progressive, democratic, and nonjudgmental & it reacts to our instructions. We are focusing hard on applying the available bandwidth to proper use by providing opportunities in areas that usually do not find favors’.
59 live matches, up to 3 broadcasters, infinite digital convergence, about 3 lac participants, more than 3.5 lac AV’s, 200 selected cricketers, thousands of contests’ finalists, about 100 media school interns, hundreds of awards, millions of dreams and this is just the first season. ‘It’s so lovingly terrifying and our team has been on it for more than a year now’. Not only the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial & our broadcast partner but various corporate houses, celebrities and legendary players are tirelessly supporting us in our quest of mobilizing resources to fulfil the dreams and aspirations of Rural India by connecting them to the national mainstream.
‘I particularly look forward to the content that will be created by those 100 odd media school interns from all over India. Film/TV/Journalism schools are wilderness of modernism, wider vision, independence, freshness etc., and the young filmmakers encounter with thousands of real stories of ambitions & determinations would churn something that we will be proud of, Atul concludes.
It is indeed an ambitious and revolutionary idea that can make some difference and over a period of time divert dependence of shrinking land area. It would also assist in showing rural picture to urban India, it will add to television viewership as well as data penetration.
More about Kisan Cricket? Log in to www.kisancricket.com
