JAIPUR: Hope floats and how that the Indian sports ecosystem is well and truly looking past the doom and gloom that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought on. In a welcome development that has come from “left field” as it were, a new IPL-templated league has announced its arrival on the scene later this month.
Premier Handball League is all set to roll out its inaugural season with six teams representing Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Telangana, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. If all goes to plan, PHL will tip off on December 24, running through to January 10, 2021 at Jaipur’s Sawai Mansingh Stadium. The 18-day men’s event will consist of 30 league matches followed by three knockout (semis and final) games.
The six teams competing in the league are Telangana Tigers, UP Icons, Maharashtra Handball Hustlers, KingHawks Rajasthan, Bengal Blues and Punjab Pitbulls. PHL will see more than 80 players taking part in the inaugural edition as each team will consist of 14 players.
Being held under the aegis of the Handball Federation of India (HFI), and in association with the International Handball Federation and Asian Handball Federation, the league’s official license holder is PHL India Sports Private Limited, which has Aseem Merchant and Manu Agrawal as co-promoters and Mrinalini Sharma as CEO.
PHL India Sports’ stated goal is to develop and take this Olympic sports discipline to the next level, ensuring growth and success for Indian handball players at the global stage.
Significantly, PHL has secured live television broadcast for the tournament on Sony Pictures Sports Network (SPSN), while sports aggregator platform FanCode will bring the action from the league to fans across the globe online. The matches will also be streamed live on Sony Pictures Network India’s (SPN) OTT platform SonyLiv, as well as Airtel TV and Jio TV.
However, it bears noting that the launch announcement was silent on team owners or sponsors. So one has to assume that PHL India Sports will be promoters of not just the league, but also all the teams and will be underwriting all costs (including broadcast), for PHL’s debut edition.
“This is going to be a significant moment in Indian handball history as the Premier Handball League will infuse fresh breath to the sport, which has immense potential at the grassroots level. The league will bring exciting competition among the players as well as help build handball as a brand. Handball already enjoys huge popularity globally and as a federation our vision is to create a similar holistic growth story in India too,” said HFI president Arshnapally Jagan Mohan Rao at PHL’s launch announcement here at the weekend.
Ranked 32 in the world, the Indian team will get new impetus with the emergence of the PHL. At the time when the sporting world has been affected due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the upcoming season 1 of PHL will also infuse fresh breath as active sports makes a comeback.
With a strong presence of the states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Jammu, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, handball has been identified as a priority sport listed by the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports under the Target Olympic Podium Scheme.
“We have close to 80,000 registered players playing the game in India. This is huge number considering presence of the sport in the India. Handball is an Olympic sports and India is looked as the next big thing by the international federation in terms of talent and opportunities. I feel PHL has come at the right time, which will help us in our mission for Olympics and build impact of the sport in India,” said HFI vice president Anandeshwar Pandey.
Merchant added: “I have been aligned with the PHL since its inception and as a promoter of the league and a supporter of handball athletes across India, I firmly feel that we are standing at the anvil of a new tomorrow vis a vis the popularity and growth of handball in the country and handball athletes across India and globally. It is always an exciting prospect to create a platform for athletes and be enablers in a wider scheme of things wherein the dream is to ensure our athletes making our nation proud at the Olympics.”
