From CSK to Chennaiyin: Will successful teams transform Chennai into India’s finest sports city?

“Knowledgeable Chennai crowd”

In the cricketing fraternity, this is a long-running moniker. It’s tough to pin-point how and why exactly it originated, but ever since the crowd at Chepauk decided to give a standing ovation to the Wasim Akram-led Pakistan side at the end of an incredible Test match, the moniker has been prominently used.

In a strictly sporting sense, it’s perhaps time to add another adjective to the city’s sporting culture: WINNING.

The arrival of Chennai Super Kings, marked the arrival of MS Dhoni to the city. The arrival of MS Dhoni provided the people of Chennai with a sporting superstar to celebrate as their own. The success of the franchise in the decade since then has coincided with more teams in the city bringing home trophies.

Cricket

At the forefront of it all are the Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings. You only had to see the response the team got when the team was in the city before this year’s IPL for a few training sessions. It was a festival. Returning after two years, the men in yellow were showered with love and cheers. In a disappointing turn of events, the team ended up playing just one match in the city during the IPL, with political issues forcing the league’s hand to move the base of the team. But, even in that one match against KKR, you could see the impact the franchise has had on the fans. As it turned out, by the end of the season, CSK reiterated their status as the team to beat in the IPL.

But the city’s (and in most cases, the country’s) love for CSK is well-documented. The possible side-effects of the city boasting of such a successful franchise, has been the emergence of more Indian cricketers from the state, and a broadcasted T20 league - the TNPL – that has provided a platform for many more players to showcase their talent. T Natarajan is one example of how the league helped him to catch the attention of IPL teams.

Cricket has always been seeped in Chennai’s culture, thriving club-based leagues have been around for a long time. But it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that, in terms of Tamil Nadu cricketers, making their mark at the top, this is the best phase in recent memory. R Ashwin, M Vijay, Dinesh Karthik are regular first-teamers, and the likes of Washington Sundar, Vijay Shankar are starting to feature increasingly more.

A good time to be a cricketer in the city, indeed.

Football

In the Indian Super League, Chennaiyin FC have almost tried to mirror the success of Chennai Super Kings. The managers, present and past, have repeatedly spoken about the ownership model which doesn’t interfere with footballing affairs, a family atmosphere in the changing room, and retaining core players in the side for the most part. The result? Three semi-final appearances in four years of ISL and two titles to show for it.

The more significant impact of Chennaiyin’s presence in the city is a growing fan-base for the sport. Much like the West Block Blues of Bengaluru FC, the B Stand Blues are attempting to establish an organised culture of chanting during football matches, a sign that the city is embracing the sport.

“With the entry of Chennaiyin FC, people have been taking up to football in Chennai,” Balaji Rajkumar, a core member of the BSB had told The Field ahead of the ISL final this year, for which hundreds of fans travelled to Bengaluru to see their side upset the favourites in BFC. “North Madras has always been a hot bed for football and Chennaiyin’s entry has revitalised the sport not only there, but across the city and state. You see kids going around kicking a ball, with Chennaiyin jerseys these days rather than sporting a Chennai Super Kings jersey and playing cricket.

“The kids look up to players like Jeje [Lalpekhlua], [Dhanpal] Ganesh, [Raphael] Augusto, [Bernard] Mendy and [Stiven] Mendoza and are yearning to get to this sport. The emergence of the club along with Chennai City FC has helped aspiring professionals to continue playing to earn a chance at the top league, which is in-turn improving the base of the sport if the city.”

That is a sentiment that is echoed by coaches at the grassroot level. Success, after all, breeds more success, if it inspires the fans in the right way.

Another important side-effect of the growth of the beautiful game in the city and state, is Tamil Nadu winning the national women’s title and Sethu FC’s participation in the Indian Women’s League - a byproduct of Chennaiyin FC’s success in the words of the state team coach Muruhavendhan.

Badminton

Much like cricket, the badminton franchise of the city has one massive advantage: a superstar of the sport on their roster.

She was a promising star for a while before 2016 (two-time bronze medallist at the World Championships) but ever since Rio Olympics, Sindhu’s star has been on the rise in India and it’s to Chennai Smashers’ great advantage that they have her on the roster. She led her team to the title in the 2017 edition, carrying on her great form from the Olympics. While injuries to key players (Chris and Gabby Adcock) affected their playoff chances in the latest edition, the franchise got to experience the star power of Sindhu when they travelled to play in the city for the first time.

And boy, did the roof come down. As we wrote on these pages back then, Chennai welcomed and cheered for PV Sindhu just like it would a movie star.

The number of badminton academies on the city are on the rise as well. Fireball Badminton Academy, the most prominent among them, with the kids training there reaching the business end of tournaments at the domestic level. The process, it’d seem, is underway.

Academies and medal winners

In Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, the city boasts two multiple Commonwealth Games medallists from Gold Coast this year. The duo, one a veteran and the other ready to carry the baton forward, come from a city that bustles with table tennis academies and coaches these days.

In Dipika Pallikal and Joshna Chinappa, the country’s two best women’s squash players are from the city and they are products of the Indian Squash Academy’s training under Cyrus Poncha. And both of them have won medals at consecutive Commonwealth Games.

The city is also home to Viswanathan Anand, one of India’s greatest sportspersons of all time. And trying to carry on his legacy, the city boasts of arguably the country’s best nursery for young chess talent, the Chess Gurukul, which thrives with teenagers and kids trying to master the game of knights. Soon-to-be Grandmaster R Praggnanandha is the brightest talent in the academy that has produced many GMs before him, under the tutelage of RB Ramesh. Ramesh, a GM himself, took to the game after being inspired by Anand.

As is apparent, across sport, the city now boasts of winning teams or successful athletes. The one obvious issue that stands out is the absence of local representation in some of the teams based out of the city.

India, however, is moving ahead on the path of franchise-based leagues established in the US, where a city’s representation in the sides is not a given but the fan-base is strong nonetheless.

The pride that comes with supporting a team from your city, especially a winning one, invariably translates into more kids taking up a sport and in the long run, transforms a passionate fan-base into a thriving talent hot-bed. That is what happened with Mumbai and cricket, and that is the path Chennai seems to be heading on.

*Correction: The original article erroneously said Chennaiyin FC qualified for semifinals in 2016. It has now been rectified.