Ireland Sevens international Terry Kennedy on Sunday helped the Chennai Bulls clinch India’s inaugural Rugby Premier League (RPL) title as the sport took its first fledgling steps in a nation obsessed by cricket.
Kennedy scored two of Chennai’s seven tries as they concluded the six-team rugby sevens franchise league with a 41-0 thrashing of the Delhi Redz in Mumbai.
India’s Olympic gold medalist shooter Abhinav Bindra was among the many stars who graced the final, although the crowds were understandably no match for the hordes that turned up to watch Virat Kohli’s Bengaluru win the T20 Indian Premier League (IPL) earlier this month. However, the RPL’s coverage on satellite television has given organizers hope that rugby could emerge as a major sport in India.
Photo: AFP
“No matter how big a sport may be, there is always space if you work hard enough, if you create a product that’s good enough,” Rugby India president Rahul Bose said. “In that respect we are very happy and very secure in the knowledge that there is space for this game, and it doesn’t have to come by eating away at anybody else’s space.”
Just as the IPL focused on the shortest form of cricket, so the RPL has chosen to go for the shortest form of rugby, with the seven-a-side format in this tournament lasting 16 minutes — four quarters of four minutes each — and dispensing with the hard grunt of the 15-man game to showcase slick handling and blistering pace.
Kennedy is not the only top Sevens player to have been drafted in to the RPL. His teammate Joseva Talacolo, who also scored a try in Sunday’s final, won silver with Fiji at last year’s Olympics in Paris, while Scott Curry, whose Bengaluru Bravehearts finished fourth after losing the bronze medal match to the Hyderabad Heroes, played 321 times for New Zealand’s Sevens team.
Photo: AFP
American Perry Baker, now 39 and a two-time World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year, came out of retirement to play for the Kalinga Black Tigers.
The first iteration of the tournament has gone down well with the public, Bose said.
“What we have heard is that the game is easy to follow, very fast, very exciting and has got tremendous amount of likeability,” said Bose, who is also a successful Bollywood actor. “Along with that, the athletic prowess of these men has come in for a lot of attention. We are happy with the connect we have made.”
The RPL is seen as a way for India to bolster its dreams of hosting the Olympics in 2036 — and given the continental qualifying system for the Olympics, India even has an eye on fielding a men’s or women’s team prior to that, but it is more than an ideal. The RPL, which blends Indian players with international stars, is run by GMR Sports which, as owner of IPL team the Delhi Capitals, knows a thing or two about franchise competitions in India.
“The first season has gone very well for us,” GMR chief executive officer Satyam Trivedi said. “The sponsors are happy with what they see on the ground and on TV. However, this is just the beginning for us. We are looking at the first season as a showcase event and take a lot of learnings from here. Every season this league will get bigger and better.”
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