Most sports in India might get scant attention from the media but a few committed fans are setting that right online Empty stadiums are a familiar sight where non-cricket sports are concerned. During matches,the gun-shot,the whipping racquet,the thud of the basketball,the cries of agony or victory alike echo against vacant seats. Listen carefully,however,and you will be able to hear a faint clicking sound in the background. The source of that sound is either a former sportsperson,or a sports fanatic typing away frantically,updating results in an effort to record moments of his cherished sport on the World Wide Web. They ensure that their favourite sport enjoys some spotlight. Shimon Sharif indianshooting.com When Indias World Cup winning captain,Mahendra Singh Dhoni,wanted to know the procedure for buying a sports rifle,he sent a mail to indianshooting.com. He eventually placed an order on our website for an Olympic standard Walther rifle, said current national level shooter,Shimon Sharif,the founder of indianshooting.com. Sharif spends considerable time at the shooting range,sharpening his aim or improving his accuracy. He then gets down to his second job that of maintaining his website. I usually shoot in the day and work on the website till early morning. At shooting competitions,his laptop and gun go hand in hand. The idea for the website,says Sharif,came after Rajyavardhan Rathore won a silver at the Athens Olympics in 2004. The achievement created a great deal of curiosity. Since the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) hosted no website of its own,Sharif took the initiative. Initially,I decided to put up basic information so that the sport could reach the people. A website by the shooters for the shooters, he says. Information wasnt readily available and it took six months of research before he could start the site. He took help from Anupam Mukherji,also known as the Fake IPL player,who helped in deciding the business model. Many national level shooters tell him that they have been introduced to the sport through this site. Beginners get to interact with star shooters and coaches through the chat box. Many top shooters like Gagan Narang contribute photographs and write about their experiences from international competitions. Even Abhinav Bindra once had an hour long live chat session with users on the website, he says. Vivek Pathak cuesportsindia.com While former national snooker player,Vivek Pathak,was watching Pankaj Advani and Manan Chandra blow off some steam,although competitively,on a tennis court in Ahmedabad,memories of an unforgettable contest between the two,on the green baize,in 2006 came flooding back. That match and the events that followed prompted him to start the informative snooker and billiards website cuesportsindia.com. The match had everything good breaks,patient play and accurate shot making. I was looking forward to reading the paper the next morning to see how the match would be described. To my disappointment,the news was in an insignificant corner of the paper and had no relevant information. It was grave injustice to a great match, he said. Geet Sethi had been Pathaks childhood hero; the site started on April 19 Sethis birthday. It gives information about snooker and billiards,result updates of Indians from foreign tournaments and the years schedule of tournaments. Players can now almost halve their travel and staying expenses for tournaments by planning their schedule in advance, he says. Pathak was especially happy that Sethi took notice of the site. When I started the site,I was a little lost. That was when Geet told me to start a community to share views and make it interactive. It worked, he says. Karan Madhok hoopistani.blogspot.com Madhok married his love for basketball with his passion for writing when he wrote a few articles for a basketball website slamonline.com in early 2009. He had a dream,at that time,to globalise Indian basketball. In my own small way I wanted to give Indian basketball a platform to be noticed the world over, he says. In August of 2009,Madhok started his own blog,hoopistani.blogspot.com . The 26-year-old hails from Varanasi basketballs most prolific hub in recent years,having produced stars including captains of the mens and womens teams,Vishesh Brughavanshi and Prashanti Singh. Madhok played for his school,but could never make it to the big league. His love for basketball,however,did not fade away. This New York Knicks fan has always followed the NBA religiously. I would wake up at 5 am and wouldnt miss a single game, he says. He wrote a few articles for the NBA India website and other American basketball websites and then shifted his focus to Indian basketball. He started his blog more as a hobby to supplement a 9-to-5 media- relations job he had with his old school. I had been aware of the sport in India for more than 10 years but my knowledge was shallow. In-depth coverage began with the launch of the blog," he says. He travelled across the country for all his stories to McLeodganj where basketball was popular among monks,to a remote village in Punjab called Bhamara to interview the 14 year-old seven-footer,Satnam Singh,seen as a likely NBA player,and to Kottayam in Kerala to speak to Geethu Anna Jose about her selection trials for the WNBA. The efforts been worth it. Due to lack of media attention,players are very accessible and they treat you like a friend. It was very difficult to look at a seven-footer as a child. But that is exactly what Satnam was a 14-year-old giant of a child. Playing basketball with monks was a whole different experience, says Madhok who is currently the media officer of the Basketball Federation of India. K Arumugam stick2hockey.com Hockey historian K Arumugam started the website stick2hockey.com in December 1999 because of the paucity of regular and reliable hockey information. I wanted to bring the statistics to the fore, he says. Even though the initial investment was of Rs 70,000,his biggest problem was that he was 40 years old and found it difficult to grasp online technology. I joined NIIT for a three-month course in Web design and then started managing the site myself, he says. Initially,the expenses for covering tournaments abroad were up to Rs 25,000 per competition. But as time passed,the site got more popular and caught attention of hockey fans the world over. Overseas fans would even arrange for his local transport and stay,thus halving his costs. I introduced live text commentary for the Punjab Gold Cup (2009 January) and the site crashed thrice. In the run-up to the home World Cup last year,this was the only site which gave wholesome information,and got linked to the official National Federation websites even in Holland and Germany, he said. He even got a vote of confidence from Chak De! Indias lyricist and script writer Jaideep Sahni when he said that he used his site for hockey research and recommended it to friends. Arumugam spends a minimum of 5-6 hours every day in maintaining the site,keeping track of stats,profiles and information at the micro and macro level.
