BENGALURU: If you had visited the Koramangala Indoor Stadium in the recent past, you would have noticed a new sport had taken over the court. While the game isn’t particularly new by any means, its presence under the spotlight has been a warm awakening for fans.
The sport in question is volleyball and the thing that has catapulted it onto the mainstream is the Prime Volleyball League (PVL), which is currently ongoing in its second season. Bengaluru was hosting PVL until Feb 12, but now it will be played Hyderabad and Kochi. A big draw for players in the league is that the winning team will participate in the FIVB Volleyball Men’s Club World Championship, taking place in India at the end of the year.
While the stadium was partially packed most of the time, the ones who were in attendance, displayed high enthusiastic pride in supporting the sport they love. One such fan is Rohan Gupta, who had come to the city from Baroda to watch the league. “When I was in school, my coach introduced me to volleyball. He was from south India and he showed me how much support volleyball has in the southern part of the country. Last year, I saw it on TV in my hostel and didn’t think watching it live would be very different. But once I was there, I realised how wrong I was. You can truly sense the commanding presence of athletes on the court,” shares Gupta.
The kind of volleyball played in PVL is new-age. Traditionally a sport played in three or five sets, with each set comprising 25 points (with the final set having only 15 points), in PVL, every set is a 15-point showdown. Joy Bhattacharjya, the CEO of PVL, believes this change adds a higher element of thrill to the game.
“We introduced this league to change the place volleyball has on the sporting scale in India. For some reason, it had always been a sport that never got too much attention after the college level. It never had any heroes and without heroes, a sport can’t grow. There was also high potential for volleyball to be a national sensation because it is a screen-friendly sport. This format is exciting as the moment a team loses out on 3-4 points, they are scrambling to catch up,” shares Bhattacharjya, adding the level of play in Indian volleyball is high but is untapped. If the country invests in the sport enough, the Indian team can go on to represent the country in the Olympics by 2028.
Akhin GS, a key player for the Chennai Blitz, believes the new rules have made the game more enjoyable. “With only 15 points at stake, the game is faster and gets over in two or three rotations. It is more enjoyable and suits the players as well,” says Akhin.
On the increasing popularity of PVL, Srajan U Shetty, who plays for Bengaluru Torpedoes, is enjoying his time playing in the nationally televised tournament and being coached under three-time Olympian and 2008 gold medalist David Lee. “The league gave us access to Lee as our coach who guided and shared his experience of dominating the sport at the highest level. Playing in my home state has also helped me be grateful for the support this city has provided,” says Shetty, adding that he looks forward to playing against the Kolkata Thunderbolts, the defending champions of the tournament.
Ruben Adrian Wolochin, an Argentine and the head coach of the Chennai Blitz, feels the new PVL rules have created novel strategic avenues for the sport. “The rules have opened up new ways of approaching a game. Players are more conservative and make fewer mistakes. The mental approach is different now. I have been coaching since 1991 and have coached in 12 different countries. The culture of volleyball here in India is huge.
Even though the local players didn’t have much exposure to the international game, I must say they have adapted to the newer system fairly quickly,” concludes Wolochin.