Where did Indian football trump IPL?
Was the IPL suspension the consequence of force majeure or the WALTO factor? Force majeure is the “unforeseen circumstance” clause in a contract, but it was not like the BCCI ignored the spike in covid cases across India. Three weeks before the IPL began crowds were cleared out of the last five matches of the India v England series in Ahmedabad and Pune. So maybe WALTO—We Are Like That Only—is what did the IPL in. Hang-writing aside, there happen to be ways around WALTO that’s have worked in Indian sport over the last six months.
Two football leagues and one League qualifier have taken place in biobubbles without IPLlevel shambles. Last October, the I League qualifier in Kolkata— five teams, 27 days from quarantine to last match—became India’s first major post-pandemic sporting event. It served as trial for I League, the most recent of the three successful sports events in India. An 11-team, 110-day event, played across four grounds, three in Kolkata, one 55kms away in Kalyani, ending on March 27. The I League used to be India’s premier footballing competition, the position beatifically-handed over to the Indian Super League, also successfully held in Goa from November 20 to February 28.
That the I League, with far fewer resources and lesser TV attention than ISL, got through its 110 days unscathed makes a better template for running Indian sporting events run in a pandemic. The involvement of Indian footballers in Covid relief, reported in moving detail here
last week, is also a humanitarian model that should be borrowed by other athletes and sport in India.
When the I League quarantine began, there were five positive cases from players and support staff arriving from various parts of India. They were only let into the bubble following due isolation and repeat testing protocols. The remaining three-odd months were allclear. Sunando Dhar, CEO Leagues, of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) says, “We can now say we were successful with the plan that we had. Maybe we were slightly
lucky, it could have gone wrong, but it didn’t. We did a very detailed plan which helped us.”
Sniggering from the elevated pulpit of Indian cricket that the IPL and Indian football are far too divergent to even be on the same table, is misguided. Football is a full body contact sport, with a greater chance of transmission and infection. Any football league entails more visits to the doctor than cricket.
The I League’s big advantage was being housed in one city, Kolkata, all eleven teams housed in two hotels. Covid protocols in sport worldwide are now standardised
and only modified only to fit specifics. The I League set up a medical hub with an X-ray machine and dedicated two doctors and compounders inside their hotel bubble to attend to basic: stiches or patching up. Dhar reckons the League called for 25-30 MRIs scans at a designated hospital, but during fixed times slots. Either early in the morning around 5:30 or late at nightafter 11pm, with zero public contact.