SAJI CHACKO
Darts is one of the fastestgrowing sports in the world, India being no exception. From a handful of social club members in the late 1990s the number has swelled to over 2,500 including 700 players in the national circuit and 1800 amateurs coming up from the ranks from various states in India. The sport’s apex body, the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) – established in 1992 – has affiliations with more than 92 countries, and is headquartered in London.
There are a plethora of reasons that make darts a popular sport in India. The simplicity and the low-cost infrastructure of the darts board and darts make it possible for persons across any strata to adopt the sport. It is extremely easy to set up a game of darts virtually anywhere.
Huge prize money
Another crucial reason, also a more alluring one, is the prize money involved in the sport. Most people would be astonished to know that even a medium level darts player in India would stand to make up to Rs 50,000 to 1,00,000 by playing only at the domestic and Asian level. For top notch players, who compete at the world-level, the prize money is large enough to be comparable to a game like tennis.
What should come as the biggest surprise to many is that a tournament of the stature of the PDC World Championships has a prize money of £ 5,00,000 (Rs 54,000,000) for the champion, a staggering amount even by tennis and football standards. Besides, each player competing in the World Championships is assured of winning £ 7,500 (Rs 8,10,000).
Unisex competition
A unique feature of darts is that both men and women compete in a single event, unlike sports like tennis, badminton and squash. Also, there have been several instances when women players have beaten men to win the title. A recent example of this was when 18-year-old Mahi Bosmia from India won the PDC Asian Championships qualifier in Surat this year.
British darts historian Patrick Chaplin had predicted way back in 2005 that India would becoming a hotbed of darts. He felt that the simplicity of the game would prove to be the catalyst for its growth.
“It’s a high-precision sport which tests the concentration, and requires splitsecond analysing abilities. These are the traits in which Indians are well endowed and can compete with the best in the world,” says Devesh Srivastava, President of the Indian Darts Council.
