Million Dollar Arm Part 2? India may turn to cricket again in search of baseball players for Asian Games, Olympics

Still at an ideation stage, the proposal was discussed during the meeting of the high-powered Mission Olympic Cell (MOC), which monitors India’s preparations for multi-discipline games, on Tuesday.

The MOC also discussed the “action plan up to the 2026 Asian Games” which involves resolving governance issues within the sports federations, “exploring the possibility of conducting domestic leagues in various games”, and “identifying possible training venues in Japan for better acclimatisation in the lead up to the Asian Games”.

With the Asiad just 18 months away, a committee member said baseball was “a long-term project” as it was “realistically” not possible to form a competitive team in such a short period.

“However, it is a medal sport and we should at least work towards India’s participation in it. We have a large talent pool in cricket. Many players are very good at the sport but are still unable to make it to the top. So, it was discussed that we could explore the possibility of transferring talent from cricket to baseball and softball,” the committee member told The Indian Express. “There is no concrete plan yet. This was just the first meeting of the newly-constituted MOC and everyone will come up with their suggestions in the coming meetings.”

It is an ambitious idea, but not a new one. In the past, American sports agent J B Bernstein came to India to search for baseball pitchers who could throw a ball at the speed of 90 mph. In 2008, he held a reality TV show in India, and unearthed two such talents in Uttar Pradesh — Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, who went on to sign for Major League Baseball side Pittsburgh Pirates, a first in Indian sporting history.

The attempt to turn 140-plus cricket pacers into pitchers of around the same speed caught the interest of Walt Disney Pictures, which went on to produce the film Million Dollar Arm, starring Jonathan Daniel Hamm, the lead of hit television series Mad Men.

While the film was a modest success, the baseball careers of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel didn’t take off. Singh turned into a professional wrestler in the US, competing under the ring name ‘Veer’; Patel returned to India and attempted to popularise baseball.

In 2014, ahead of the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea turned to its baseball players in an attempt to form a cricket team of indigenous players instead of South Asian expats. Similarly, after a two-decade career in baseball, Japan’s Shogo Kimura switched to cricket and even played for his country in the 2022-23 ICC T20 World Cup qualifiers.

At the meeting earlier this week, the MOC — comprising former athletes, Indian and foreign coaches, high-performance directors and officials from the federations and government — also identified 16 sports for inclusion in the newly-launched Target Asian Games Group (TAGG).

These sports — from cycling, gymnastics and fencing to kabaddi, wushu and sepaktakraw — are often seen as “fringe” in India but offer a bulk of medals at the Olympics and Asian Games.

Exploring the possibility of conducting domestic leagues in different sports was among the suggestions that came up. Additionally, the MOC’s action plan ahead of the 2026 Asian Games includes conducting “national championships, open national championships and domestic ranking events for all 16 disciplines across junior and senior age groups”, a committee member said.

“It was also decided to organise training camps abroad for some sports. For instance, China can be a destination for wushu, Japan for Judo and for taekwondo, our athletes can train in South Korea,” the member said.