When we started ESPN.in (hereafter referred to as Dottin) ten years ago, we had a pretty good idea of the headline news in Indian sport and the characters who had dominated the recent past and would likely dominate the near future. With the Rio Olympics looming, our early stories were about possible medalists and those who'd keep sports fans up through the night following their progress. And we got our stars, those who won medals and those who came agonizingly close.
And in the years that followed, we were lucky to have ringside views as some of India's greatest athletes made history. The chutzpah of Neeraj Chopra, the resilience and artistry of PV Sindhu, India's greatest ever athletes outside team sport - this has been their decade. And there have been other narratives running through the decade: the super-spirited wrestlers who refused to accept defeat on the mat or (more creditably) off it, India's hockey revival (of sorts), the prolific para-athletes and the rise and rise of India's chess brigade. They made headlines, they won glory, and you'll find their exploits chronicled here.
But what has surprised us over the years at Dottin - and our team has included two of India's most eminent sports journalists, not easily surprised - is the richness and diversity of Indian sport, its ability to feed you with stories from everywhere if only you care to look. And so, our stories, while chronicling the higher-profile athletes and events, also went off the beaten path, into places where mainstream media didn't usually go. The north-east, for this fascinating story and photo-essay on how the region has supplied some of India's best footballers of this century; Odisha, to look at how a new sport, rugby, was giving women players opportunities and self-confidence; Kashmir, where the success of a new football club offered a welcome diversion from the usually grim headlines. We even had a byline from North Korea, thanks to a guest writer who travelled there with Bengaluru FC.
This training - of looking for the story away from the big events - served us well during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, when all sport stopped. Because, when all sporting competitions certainly did come to a halt, the ecosystem still existed: All those nameless, faceless people and institutions several rungs below the top tier that actually kept the wheels of sport moving. How were they, with their limited resources and bandwidth, dealing with the months-long lockdown? The community swimming pool, the neighbourhood gym, the century-old wrestling pit, the fledgling Kerala boating league, itself a reinvention of a centuries-old tradition, cricket batmakers, broadcast professionals, multi-league security experts, racket-stringers, even "Lozenge Didi" who sold sweets at football matches. Our "Sport, Interrupted" series went (mainly virtually) to all of them to find out how they were doing. It wasn't fun but it was as rewarding as any high-profile reportage, and in many ways more meaningful.
Our work has been essentially of two parts. The first has been to plug in to our vast international network and bring you the best of ESPN's coverage from Australia at one end to the Americas at the other, with Africa, mainland Europe and the UK in between. That means the best football (and footballers), the NBA, F1 and, should you want it, baseball and even American football (hey, nobody's perfect). It's all there on Dottin, within easy reach.
The other part, covering Indian sport, isn't as easy. For one, as I said, there is some sporting event on at any point of time somewhere in this vast country; taking calls on omission and commission in our coverage is a thankless task. For another, as those who've followed our stories will know, the Indian sporting system is a shambles (and that's being kind); almost any success story is despite, not because of, the system and those who run it. Heartbreak stories are everywhere. It would be easy to be overwhelmed by the sad and tragic, the unjust and unfair, and lose sight of the hope.
It also creates absurd situations: How, for example, do you report on a national federation of a high-profile sport when its head is under investigation for sexual assault (of athletes from his own sport), and, when he's replaced, he's immediately garlanded by his successor? It takes a special ability to steel oneself and put emotions aside when covering this. That said, our coverage of the wrestlers' protests - more than three years and continuing - is something we are especially proud of. It has been part of our philosophy: we will cover all the big stuff and some of the smaller stuff too but wherever there is injustice and bias, we will, to tweak the metaphor, always have the underdog in the fight.
In this, we've been lucky to have bosses who have given us the leeway to follow our noses and our conscience in our coverage. To them, many many thanks.
On the subject of thanks: This website has always been run by a close-knit team of committed sports journalists, and it's only fair to mention them here. From Day 1 till today, the Dottin team has comprised, at various points of time:
Sharda Ugra, Debayan Sen, Gaurav Rai, Anuj Vignesh, Saket Parekar, Susan Ninan, Arjun Namboothiri, Debdatta Sengupta, Mohit Shah, Jonathan Selvaraj, Govindan Kishwar, Manoj Bhagavatula, Anirudh Menon, Sunaadh Sagar, Zenia D'Cunha, Anish Anand, Shyam Vasudevan, Aaditya Narayan and Shruti Sadbhav. With guest starring roles from Gaurav Kalra and Nikhil Shetty.
Finally, to you, our readers: Thanks for sticking with us. We've tried to bring Indian sport to you in a manner that's digestible, comprehensible, less mystifying. It's never easy switching on during the Commonwealth Games, seeing an Indian team in a lawn bowls final and wonder how the sport works. Or why Sunil Chhetri's free kick in an ISL match three years ago sparked such controversy. Or what is repechage in wrestling. Don't worry, we have your backs and always will.
And now, over to the next decade, and more. We have no idea what the future holds for Indian sport but a rollcall of emerging athletes - those currently in their teens or early twenties - gives us every reason for hope. Indian sport is a beautiful, wild, unpredictable, often frustrating, but ultimately rewarding world. It's a privilege to be part of it.