League of its own: A volleyball contest in Assam is upturning notions of sport

Don't you just want the IPL to be in the play-offs already? But there's still a month-ish to go and because everything there is high-value, high-stakes, high-volume, each day is totally vital.

- Sharda Ugra

Given what Indians now understand of sporting leagues—franchises, auctions, teams, valuations—that's the logical course. Leagues are about money, profitability, business, media rights.

Well, there's really leagues and leagues. Earlier in the year, I attended the finale of a league without franchises or auctions. While there was media, there were no rights values for sure. Early disclaimer: I 'adopted' teams in this league for two seasons because it seemed a fun idea but had never seen it at work first hand.

Assam's Brahmaputra Volley League (BVL) is upside down from the IPL or our ideas of what sports leagues are all about. It seems in one breath improbable, unviable but has been so organic in its evolution, that it reimagines grassroots sport.

BVL began as a Covid project by a former India volleyball captain to distribute 100 balls to 100 Assamese villages. It morphed into the first BVL in 2020 with 50 teams (33 boys, 17 girls) across 16 districts which has grown so rapidly over five seasons that the sport's international ruling body came to see too.

BVL is the brainchild of Abhijit Bhattacharya, that Indian volleyball captain previously living out a quiet life in ONGC. As a dazed outsider at the BVL Season Five's final week of competition—called Super League—surrounded by shrieks of girls and boys playing across four courts under the golden haze of the all-bamboo flood-light towers in a corner of Assam sprinkled with magic-dust, you ask, "How did they get here?" Bhattacharya knows the answer: the cascade effect of community and sharing.