Pickleball: Bill Gates, DiCaprio's Favourite US Game Is Now Getting Indians Hooked Too
Pickleball: The sport, which originated in the US in 1965, is gaining wide popularity in India. One just needs an existing tennis/badminton court, a net, a paddle, a ball and you are good to go.
Imagine playing table tennis on a badminton court and hitting a smash like in tennis! If this sounds alien to you, you must not have heard of pickleball. The game, which originated in the US way back in 1965, is played with a squarish paddle and a wiffle ball (perforated plastic ball with 30-40 holes) and is gaining wide popularity in India now.
So, what is so interesting about the game that is seeing an influx of new players ranging from school kids (9+ years) to retired professionals (65+ years)?
What Is Pickleball? How Big Is The Game In India?
Sunil Valavalkar, who is credited with bringing pickleball to India, said the best part is that even those who have not played any sport in their lives can just learn the basics of the game in an hour or two.
One just needs an existing tennis or badminton court, a net, a paddle, a ball and you are good to go. Like tennis, badminton and TT, the aim of the game is to send the ball across the net and prevent your opponent from hitting it back.
"Every person who learns this sport starts thinking that she or he is Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer, which makes this sport interesting and addictive," Valavalkar, who is the president of International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) and the founder of All India Pickleball Association (AIPA), told ABP Live.
Presently, Pickleball is being played across 17 states in India and has over 15,000 registered players, according to the All India Pickleball Association (AIPA).
"Pickleball is an easy game to pick and unlike other racquet sports, the rules in pickleball are more simplified to include even those players who have never held a racquet before," said Raj Sengupta, a member of the governing body of the Uttar Pradesh State Pickleball Association (UPSPA).
Even though the game is still mostly played in badminton courts in most states, dedicated pickleball facilities have sprung up across sports complexes in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore, Indore, Chhattisgarh, Sikkim, and Hyderabad. In September, Uttar Pradesh got its first pickleball court at the Noida Stadium.
"It's rare to find such a sport, where you can have this mix of crowd from wide age groups. The acknowledgement of watching a grandfather excel on the court by his son or grandson is tremendous and it's an immediate hit amongst many who haven't played any form of sport in their lives," Aman Grover, general secretary of the Uttar Pradesh State Pickleball Association (UPSPA), told ABP Live.
For Pradeep Kumar Saxena, a heart patient, it would have been a laughing matter if you would have told him about six months ago that he would win a medal at a national sporting event at the age of 65.
Saxena, who is also the president of UPSPA, won the bronze medal at the Pickleball National Championship conducted by the All India Pickleball Association (AIPA) in Telangana.
"I have been a heart patient since the last two years and have been advised to rest by doctors but that incident has never pushed me back. One should never think about age and never be disheartened or think twice about picking a new game or sport in life," Saxena, who is also a state-level shooter, glider pilot and a marathon runner, told ABP Live.
So, what is the attraction of the game that brings Prabhat Mani Vats, Kalpit Sharma, Vineet Chaturvedi, Ashish Gupta, Sunil Garg and tens of others, who have other jobs, to the badminton court at Noida's Prateek Laurel society every morning?
"I have been playing badminton for quite some time. What I like about this game is that one does not need to have played any sport before trying your hand at Pickleball," Vats, who recently won a bronze medal in the men's singles 40+ age category at the Indore Pickleball Championship, said.
"The game is not as intense or physically tiring as badminton or lawn tennis. Now, it's an addiction for many of us who play this game on a daily basis," Vats, 41, said as he rushed to log in for office after playing a couple of doubles matches.
How Did Pickleball Begin?
The paddle sport has a very interesting history. Pickleball was invented in 1965 by three friends — Joel Pritchard (a Congressman), Bill Bell and Barney McCallum. It happened so that the three friends and their family had gathered at Pritchard's home in Bainbridge Island Washington for a get-together.
Soon, their children became bored and the trio tried to organise badminton at an old court nearby. However, they could not find the proper equipment and the friends improvised and played with table tennis paddles and a perforated plastic ball.
And thus, the game of pickleball was born. However, there is some dispute on how the game got its name.
Some claim that Pritchard's wife gave the name pickleball because the game, which is a combination of three sports, reminded her of the "pickle boat", a term used in sailing where sailors are chosen from leftovers of other boats during a race. Others claim that the game is named after the Pritchard family's dog, Pickles.
Pickleball is now one of the fastest growing sports in the US, which has nearly 5 million players, and across Europe. The game has been taken up by celebrities like Bill Gates (who called it his "favourite game" in a blog post), George and Amal Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and the Kardashians. Recently, basketball star Kevin Durant bought a pickleball team in the US.
Pickleball's Journey From US To India
Pickleball's journey from Washington to India came about after Valavalkar spotted families playing it during his visits to Canada in 1999 and later in Cincinnati, US, in 2006. Two years later, he went on to establish the All India Pickleball Association (AIPA) in 2008.
"After I returned from Canada, I thought I could confidently impart pickleball to others. I was a member of a tennis club. I gave a demo and asked if I could use a court for pickleball there. They outrightly refused and that humiliation made me determined to continue," Valavalkar said.
The game picked up in UP after Valavalkar came to a Noida society to give a demonstration of the sport, which is played across all disciplines — singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
From then on there has been no looking back, and people across all ages, from eight to eighty, and genders have shown tremendous interest in the sport.
While Noida has become the nerve centre of pickleball in Uttar Pradesh, the game is picking up in Lucknow, Mathura and Agra too, said Sengupta, who is a treasurer of UPSPA. "There are more than 40 players in Noida presently and the number is growing every month."
Popularity And Awareness On Pickleball
To popularise the sport, Valavalkar said, the AIPA was organising pickleball tournaments at club, district, state, national and international levels as well.
"We are also sponsoring needy players, including offering financial assistance to providing kit and diet plan and physiologic consulting," he said.
In UP, Aman Grover said UPSPA was organising and forming groups across districts with badminton/TT/tennis players and conducting boot camps within Noida schools and colleges.
"We have been receiving some great responses. One such boot camp was planned in Jhansi and it was a great success...we hope to get about 50 students picking the sport in Jhansi soon," Grover said.
By the end of this year, the UPSPA aims to introduce the game in as many as 10 more districts by holding training camps and holding state-level tournaments every quarter in Uttar Pradesh.
However, there are quite a few challenges in expanding the sport, and one of them is procuring the equipment. Presently, the paddles and balls are mostly imported from the US. The cost of a paddle can range anywhere from Rs 3,000 to Rs 25,000.
Recently, Ymak Sports became the first Indian company to get approval from the United States of America Pickleball Association (USAPA) for its paddles.
"Infrastructure is a big ask presently. However, we have tried up with local vendors to enable conversion of badminton courts into Pickleball courts and we have even tied up with professional firms like STAG to help us with this initiative of applying rolling courts to a wide variety of surfaces," Grover said.
As pickleball takes its baby steps in India, UPSPA wants the government to include it in the National Games curriculum.
"But we would like the government to first acknowledge and provide help to the players. Most governments have ample land for providing infrastructure, like dedicated courts etc. That will help players, who can't afford it, to go out and play in government-funded stadiums," Grover added.
With India set to host the Bainbridge Cup, the equivalent of the Pickleball World Cup, this November for the first time, it is expected to be another milestone for the game's growth in the country.
"In the USA, it took nearly 40 years for the sport to reach the critical mass of the society. Compared to that, perhaps in India we may require less time to reach up to 2 lakh people," Valavalkar said.
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