VIDEO: Ten Sports Promo of Celebrity Charity Football Match - ASFC vs AHFC

Here is the Ten Sports promo ahead of showing tomorrow at 9pm IST the highlights of the Celebrity Charity Football Match played between Bollywood Stars (All Stars FC) and Cricketers (All Hearts FC) on March 30 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi.

VIDEO: Bollywood Stars & Cricketers played Football for charity in Delhi

Here a report from Headlines Today on the charity football match at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on Saturday titled 'Playing for Humanity' to raise money for NGO 'Magic Bus'. In the match Bollywood stars took on players from the Indian Cricket team.

Tonight Bollywood Stars & Cricketers play Football for charity in Delhi

Tonight well-known Bollywood stars and players from the Indian Cricket team will be playing a charity football match at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi for a good cause titled 'Playing for Humanity' to raise money for NGO 'Magic Bus'.

The match will see the GS Worldwide Entertainment managed All Stars Football Club, which is a team of Bollywood actors, small screen actors, models, sports persons and friends take on the Cornerstone Sport and Entertainment managed, All Heart Football Club, a team of the Virat Kohli Foundation.

The All Stars FC will be captained by Abhishek Bachchan and have Ranbir Kapoor as vice-captain. Other stars who are likely to participate tonight are Dino Morea, Arjun Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Marc Robinson, Shabir Ahluwalia, Karan Wahi, Ameet Gaur, Aditya Roy Kapoor, Sachin Joshi, Raj Kundra, Caesar Gonzalves, Bosco Martis, Romeo Gates, Mazhar Dalvi, Jignesh Antala, Jas Bilang, Rohan Shreshta besides sporting icons Leander Paes, Nishant Mehra and Ritwik Bhattacharya plus other icons from the entertainment industry.

On the other side Cricket World Cup star Virat Kohli is the captain for the Indian cricket team, which also includes Mahender Singh Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh and others.

Both sides know that the match is about raising money for charity, but they also want to win tonight.

The match will kick-off at 8pm IST at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi.

Bollywood Stars & Cricketers to play football for a good cause

It is a known fact that there are big football fans in Bollywood and amongst the Indian Cricket team and for a good cause titled 'Playing for Humanity' these stars will raise money for NGO Magic Bus.

The match will be played on March 30 in New Delhi and it is being managed by GS Worldwide Entertainment and the All Stars Football Club

"ASFC is a lot of fun. We plan to do great work. It's raising the awareness for a great game, to popularise it and to raise funds and it's a very noble gesture and I'm looking forward to playing," Abhishek Bachchan said in a press release.

Ranbir Singh added, "I'm fortunate to be one of the founders of the club. Bunty Walia (GS Entertainment) came with this brilliant idea and all the profits go to the charity organizations and I think it's a great cause."

The Bollywood team will be led by Abhishek Bachchan which will also include Ranbir Singh and Arjun Kapoor; while Cricket World Cup star Virat Kohli is the captain for the Indian cricket team, which also includes Mahender Singh Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh.

VIDEO: Pepsi T20 Football Grand Finale ESPN episode

Pepsi India has partnered with sports channel ESPN-Star Sports, who will produce and showcase the Pepsi T20 Football tournament in a special 8-episode series. This is the seventh part of the series from the capital New Delhi!



Here the link to my original article from March: Pepsi India launch Amateur T20 Football Tournament !

VIDEO: Latest Pepsi Film - Footballers vs Cricketers!

The latest ad is a really funny one by Pepsi India! It features last nights Chelsea FC hero's Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Fernando Torres taking on Team India cricketers in a game of Cricket with elements of football and captain Mahender Singh Dhoni as umpire.

VIDEO: So what can a van full of footballs do to a game of cricket?

Pepsi India has changed strategy and is now using football as a marketing tool rather then cricket in the past. Here a lovely video on this!!!

VIDEO: Indian football can challenge cricket!

Indian news channel News X makes a provocative statement by saying 'Indian football can challenge cricket' and questions 'Is Football the next Cricket?'. Watch the video to why the channels Sports Desk comes to this interesting conclusion.

India's Cricket World Cup triumph, is it global?

First of all my congratulations to the Indian Cricket Team, the support staff and the games followers for winning the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup title!

As one can see from the reactions from the media, the superstars and the general public; this win means a lot for India and its people. The celebrations are not only within India, but Indians around the world are enjoying this success.

But amongst all these celebrations the question has to be asked, what impact does such a Cricket World Cup triumph have on the world at large? Is the planet actually noticing what is happening in India? Maybe on international news channels, but often not the mainstream media across the globe. Most of the 7 billion inhabitants won't even know that India has won the Cricket World Cup.

I can give you a personal example here from Germany, where cricket is not followed at all. I myself, who is not a Cricket expert, had been asked by Germany's biggest newspaper the 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung' to write something about the World Cup for Germans to understand. First an article about the India vs Pakistan match, what it means for the sub-continent and then a report on Indian after winning the World Cup for tomorrows edition. It has been really though to write for me such an insightful article knowing I am targeting an audience with no knowledge on what I am writing.

To explain that this win means a lot to many amongst the 1,2 billion plus Indians, but the rest of the world doesn't even know what has happened in the subcontinent over the last few weeks. It is like the grand finales of US sports - American Football's Super Bowl, Baseballs World Series, etc - or the World Cup finals of many different sporting disciplines. Could you tell me who won the Skiing or Biathlon World Cup titles earlier this year? In Scandinavia they'll all tell you!

And I think that Cricket will never become a global sport whatever the ICC, the BCCI, etc try to do, then for an average sports fan who watches sports live or on television it is either about the game or entertainment. And cricket hasn't been able to create that connect elsewhere then the subcontinent and some other Commonwealth nations.

If you look at efforts that have failed to promote cricket in North America and China. I once knew the former president of the US Cricket Federation and he told me about five years back it would be difficult to promote the game in the US due to the countries sporting diversity and lack of infrastructure though South Asians and people from the West Indies have tried to establish the game, even India vs Pakistan series used to be played in Toronto, Canada takes part, but what else?

Me writing about Cricket

Those of you who follow not only my blog, but also my updates on Facebook & Twitter will have seen that I have written a number of articles about Cricket over the last few days, actually it has been weeks now since the start of the Cricket World Cup.

I have written and reported about many different topics and issues over the years, but it has been mainly football centric. So the last few weeks have been a new world for someone born and brought-up in Germany as here you don't really follow cricket in continental Europe. And as a journalist you have to have enough background information to be able to write about a topic, at least this is the way we were thought journalism but isn't always followed these days...

Plus I have been learning more and more about cricket which has also meant that I can now better understand the Indian psyche when it comes to the love for cricket. In my opinion it has a lot to do with media coverage, which often over the last few weeks has been close to overkill but also peer/public pressure to follow the topic of the moment.

The Cricket World Cup has been on for nearly six weeks, but only in the last 10 days there has been a real interest and the absolute climax was yesterday's India vs Pakistan match. And the positives from this match are for all to see as sports was at the centre of everything, which could help reduce tensions between these two neighbours. But I question if the interest is as big and real as all these reactions make us all think. If India had been eliminated earlier would all this interest be there? As example in 2007 at the World Cup exit many said, I'm no longer interested in cricket.

More topics for write-ups about cricket, which will go on over the weekend. But no worries football will remain my first love and the topic about which I will keep on writing...


Here some links to my write-ups

- FAZ article: Kricket-WM: Das Duell der Duelle (in German language)

- DW article: South Asian teams dominate 2011 Cricket World Cup

- DW article: 2011 Cricket World Cup – group stage


To follow my thoughts, write-ups & journey's

Follow me on Facebook: Arunava Chaudhuri Fanpage

Follow me on Twitter: @Arunfoot

Cricket's IPL - In Self-Destruction mode?

I am not an insider of cricket and never honestly will be an expert in the game, but what has been happening with the Indian Premier League is just unbelievable to me who tries to follow not only Indian football, but sports in India in general. It is clear to me that not all deals were done the "proper way"; but still a sporting product, a whole league, has been created out of nothing and now it is being destroyed.

A few month's ago the IPL brand was valued at 4,1 Billion US Dollars, an unbelievable figure for a league which is only three seasons old and was build from scratch. But now after the Modi vs Tharoor Twitter spat, getting rid of IPL chairman Lalit Modi, the controversies surrounding the Kochi franchise plus expelling the Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab due to breach of ownership rules; many questions remain and surely the brand value of the IPL will have nose dived just like it had rocketed earlier. And with matters set to be taken to court if the Royals and Kings XI remain expelled, then the IPL could face even bigger problems ahead of season 4.

It seems that personal egos are bigger then the IPL, the Board of Control for Cricket in India or even the sport of cricket as the game could suffer due to all these off field problems. The fourth season of IPL is unsure at the moment as no one knows how many teams will participate, the new auctioning of players is postponed, so proper planning is just impossible. And this could put off the multi billion investors, who often are Indian corporates who have tried to run their IPL teams like businesses.

So the question is, is the IPL turning into another sign of Indian bureaucracy? At the moment it seems so, then the government and the BCCI wanted to gain complete control over the IPL as it was a booming league plus its then chairman and founder Lalit Modi had become bigger then everybody else. Much to the dislike of numerous bigwigs. And now even the future of the league is in question.

And all this chaos could have effects on other sports too. Potential investors will rethink numerous times before investing their money into a club or league as they know their investments could potentially go down the drain. A scary picture of Indian sports in 2010.

Does Football need a Lalit Modi?

At the India Football Forum 2010 organised by SportzPower in New Delhi last month, Total Sports Asia CEO Marcus Luer came up with a controversial thesis that Indian football needs a Lalit Modi like character to take the game of football forward.

And to be honest I have been thinking on the same lines as Marcus about this. Some might say these guys are crazy, but not everything Lalit Modi has done to create Cricket's Indian Premier League is bad. Lalit Modi has created a multi-billion dollar property out of nothing. And he did it against all odds in India be it political, administration, etc.

One needs to think out of the box to create something like the IPL where sports meets big business and entertainment. India is a growing economic power house with money available for investment and sports is entertainment these days, this is how you attract the masses. But the money needs to be for projects which show return of investment or considerable brand value. And that is what the IPL has been able to create.
But would the football authorities allow this to happen?

I don't think that we need an IPL-style football league, we should rather concentrate on further developing the I-League. We have a base here with a strong foundation, but now the building has to come up in such a way that it becomes self-sustainable.
But as written in an earlier write-up we need a focus project towards which all our efforts are concentrated. And that could be a bid for the 2030 FIFA World Cup. And such a bid would need a charismatic leader, someone well connected in India, but especially abroad.

So who could be the Lalit Modi kind of character, who is bold enough to fight his ideas through a system which is unwilling to change. I don't want to mention any names as it would be unfair on those guys, some of them being personal friends of mine. But there are these people and they need to come forward and take up the responsibility of building a better future for football in India.

If we in the end don't find a Lalit Modi like character maybe Lalit Modi himself would be interested to shift his focus from cricket to football. In cricket circles he seems to be unwanted these days that might be the chance for football to get him on board for projects like the above mentioned.
Mr. Modi are you listening? And are you interested?

Football IPL - the future for India?

Is an IPL-style football league the answer to Indian football's woes?

I personally have severe doubts. The game of football cannot be compared with cricket or any other sport for that matter. The football league system has been in place across the globe for many decades and even in India the national league under different names has been around for now 14 years.

The I-League, India's Professional Football League, currently at the end of its third season is still in a developmental stage and the path taken by the All India Football Federation in expanding the league by two teams every years seems to be slowly bearing fruits. But it has a long way to go to be a real professional league.

Since the old National Football League was renamed after 11 seasons to I-League three years back the league has grown in size, the general standard of football has improved and the game has spread to new centres like Shillong and Pune. And in the new season the AIFF plans to add New Delhi and Bangalore to the league. But at the moment it isn't clear if new sides will receive the slots or if existing teams will be given those with no other choice.


Would a Football IPL hamper the I-League's development?

It depends on what plans the people behind the Football IPL have.

The information currently available is very patchy and different sources say different things with the people behind the project being very tied-lipped. This makes it difficult to judge the ideas and plans.

If it is planned as a six/seven week summer intermezzo, then surely it wouldn't have such a big effect on the I-League.

Then such a football IPL could actually supplement the I-League and the two could co-exist.
Still if finance, media coverage and fan focus is taken away from the I-League to the Football IPL, then it would hamper the further overall development of the game.


But there are loads of things which one would have to look at to make a Football IPL a reality.

Who would be the players, is there space in the international football calendar and many more issues.

A non-starter is getting the current stars of world football to play in India due to their allegiance to their respective clubs and countries. Then you have football World Cup’s and Continental championships every other year. So a football IPL would have to rely on players who have just retired or former stars.

Would a Zinedine Zidane come out of retirement to play a Football IPL?
I would say no, except he is offered a ridiculous amount of money which he has to accept.

Further questions would be, would Industrialists be willing to pay big bucks for such former stars, would the Indian public like to see such players in action. And how would be the local Indian players fit in.


A key question which no one seems to look at is infrastructure. We don’t have the stadia to host such a four/five city football IPL at the moment.
It reminds me of the English Premier League's match 39 idea which had India on their radar as one of the potential venues around the globe though we didn't even fulfil the basic criteria to be able to host such a game.


But still the Football IPL is an idea which should be pursued and evaluated if something worthwhile could be developed. Only it shouldn’t hamper the general development of Indian football or take money away from the I-League and the national team.

It should be more about football first, then about entertainment and money.
The ongoing IPL fiasco should be a stern warning.


Do let me know if you agree with me or have a different opinion on this...