A 75-year first sparks hope for Indian cagers: Scouts eye stars and youngsters for India Basketball League

NAGPUR: With India’s professional basketball league round the corner, international scouts joined the national selectors at the 75th Senior National Basketball Championship in Chennai.A record 65 teams, including 34 men and 31 women, participated in the eight-day senior nationals organised by the Basketball Federation of India (BFI). A total of 780 players, 100 officials, and 195 coaches and support staff from across India made the Diamond Jubilee edition special.Though the spectators mostly were fellow players themselves at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium, the who’s who of Indian basketball assembled in Tamil Nadu to finalise the intricacies of the India Basketball League (IBL).For participating cagers, the 75th senior Nationals differed from the previous 74 championships as the Chennai leg brought similar opportunities for veteran stars, current India players, and youngsters to make a career in basketball. The earlier nationals were like routine events where the prestige of state and departmental teams was at stake, and 12 men and women were selected to don the India cap.Last year, when the BFI launched the IBL, players across the country celebrated, and teams began preparatory camps months before the national championship.The 75th Nationals brought with it a wide range of opportunities for over 100 players to impress international scouts recruited by BFI partners and joint league organisers ACG Sports Private Limited.With the launch of IBL in June last year, former Commissioner of Australia’s National Basketball League (NBL), Jeremy Loeliger, was appointed director of ACG Sports to give wings to the dream of all Indian cagers. In Australia, Jeremy has helped transform NBL into the second-best basketball league in the world after NBA.Around 160 men and women will be identified to participate in IBL, which is likely to start after July. Last month, at BFIACG’s High Performance Centre (HPC) in Bengaluru, selection trials for men were conducted to identify players for IBL.