Hey Mumbai, brace for pro paintball!

What’s a few paint marks on your clothes compared to the thrill of beating the opponents. Small kicks aside, paintball’s aspirations are much bigger. A game once played for the sake of corporate team building, hopes to make a mark on the professional sport scene in a country obsessed with cricket, and, lately, football.

The representative of Millennium Series — the European paintball league, Ulrich Stahr, was in the city recently to announce the first international professional paintball tournament in India, slated for February 2011 in Bangalore. “Indians are interested in all sorts of sports, not just cricket or football,” says Stahr.

It was not long ago that Kiran Soans, an IT professional from Bangalore, received a paintball kit from his brother living abroad. Unaware of rules of the game, he went to a forest nearby with friends and started shooting. They  realised this game could get intensely competitive. Earlier addicted to golf, Soans found paintball could easily become a lifestyle sport in India. Thus began the National Paintball League (NPL) in 2008, formerly the Indian Paintball League.   

Today, paintball has become a serious sport in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Shillong, which have dedicated paintball zones. The national league will start from August and will pitch the best teams from the country against each other to choose the winners. The top team will then face around 50 teams from across the country at the Indian International Open in 2011. “This year, we want to get in more teams from Mumbai, Pune and Delhi,” says Soans. The teams, will undergo thorough training. Soans himself is an avid player who led the NPL All Stars India team at the World Cup Asia Paintball tournament in Malaysia last year.

Stahr, the head referee for the game, hopes the sporting rivalry between countries soon shifts away from just cricket and hockey to paintball. “With right training and participation in international events, I believe India can become a champion in a few years,” says Stahr. While the American teams rule the roost when it comes to paintball, Australia won last year’s World Cup Asia.
One of the few sports in which women and men can play together, paintball is aiming to hit the younger crowd — those with the spending power and the passion to play. “The game grows on you,” says Stahr.

Future plans involve hosting an Indian International Open every year. “I want paintball to become the new lifestyle sport on the lines of golf,” says Soans.