Polo league to kick off in March

Jaipur: The country has witnessed several franchise-based leagues emerging in sports recently and the latest to join this bandwagon is the sport of kings — polo.

The Champions Polo League will kick off in March next year, it was announced here on Saturday.

The league, a brainchild of Gujarat-based industrialist and avid polo player Chirag Parekh, will witness participation from key polo players across the globe along with their Indian counterparts.

The tournament will have six teams participating in its inaugural season with four players in each team and it will be played in flood-lit grounds. The auction of the players will be held in January next year.

Parekh wants to make the sport popular among the masses and he got the idea of a franchisee-based professional league for polo after successfully conducting a tournament earlier this year in his native state.

“Polo is generally perceived to be an elite sport. It is mostly played by the patrons of the sport who are very passionate about it.

“But it is not a sport, which is generally very popular among the masses. People perceive it to be a game of the royalty. It is thought of an expensive sport and rightly so,” Parekh told this paper.

“But we received a huge response during a tournament in Gujarat recently. That really brought in the crowds. We organised the tournament in a shorter format with simpler rules so the people can follow it. We held matches in the evenings instead of the usual afternoon time so people can come in after work.

“People were so impressed with the game and the established players on the domestic circuit like Shamsher Ali Khan and Sameer Suhag became really popular. The matches used to attract crowds of 25,000 to 30,000. This opened our eyes to the potential of this sport,” he added.

“The polo players also requested me to start a league. They insisted that a pro league is the need of the hour for the sport.”

In order to make the game more accessible and easier to understand for common people, the matches will be held on smaller grounds with simpler rules.

“We will market the CPL massively on social media and television prior to the launch. We have made the format a lot easier. We have removed the system of handicaps,” Parekh said.

Bollywood actors Saif Ali Khan and Harshvardhan Kapoor unveiled the logo of the CPL on Saturday night.