Game Play Sport with Rahul, Arvind, and Kailash

Every major sporting event — the Olympics, the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games, and countless individual global tournaments — forces India to confront the same question: how can a country of over a billion send such small teams, and return with so few podium finishes? The answer lies not in talent, but in the long, fragile journey a young athlete in India must endure before they are even visible to selectors.

This episode of Game Play Sport explores that journey through the story of Raziya Khan, midfielder for Odisha FC, whose earliest introduction to football was almost accidental. The sports room in her school was usually locked. She and the other girls used a bottle filled with stones as a football — a reminder of how little access they truly had. 

India has over half a billion gamers yet still struggles to find its place among global esports giants. In this episode hosts Rahul, Kailash, and Arvind explore how a nation that leads in mobile downloads of games continues to lag behind in professional gaming culture. From the early excitement around online cafés to mobile gaming tournaments, the story of Indian esports is one of scale without structure.

In this episode of Game Play Sport Rahul, Kailash, and Aravind speak to Nandan Kamath, one of India’s leading sports lawyers, to unpack the implications of the Online Gaming (Regulation and Promotion) Act, 2025 and what it means for India’s real-money gaming industry. 

Drawing from his legal experience and policy insights, Kamath explains how law is trying to catch up with technology in a space where skill, chance, and profit collide.

This week on Game Play Sport, Arvind, Kailash and Rahul sit down with Chelston Pinto — founder and CEO of Rapid Sports — to ask a powerful question: are we killing the joy of play?  Sports education in India is now shifting from old-school drills and marching to hyper-structured academies. But in the rush to create champions, are we forgetting the sheer fun of unstructured play?

When Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, the world witnessed more than a sporting upset. It was the symbolic clash of human intuition with computational brute force — and for the first time, the machine won. To many, it felt like the end of chess as we knew it. If even the sharpest human mind couldn’t outthink silicon, what future did the game have? Yet what followed was not decline but reinvention. Chess didn’t collapse; it transformed, expanded, and in many ways became even more alive.

In this episode of Game Play Sport, hosts Rahul, Arvind, and Kailash are joined by Manuja Veerappa, senior sports journalist with The Times of India. Together, they explore the disappearance of playing spaces in Bengaluru, the rise of private academies, and what these shifts say about India’s sporting priorities.

In this episode hosts Rahul, Kailash, and Arvind are joined by Aradhana and Shravanti Mokashi — sisters, former state-level badminton players, and now coaches — who’ve spent decades navigating the realities of being women in a space still dominated by men.

In this episode of Game Play Sport, we explore how OTT platforms like Netflix are reshaping the way sport is consumed in India.

In this episode of Game Play Sport, Rahul, Kailash, and Arvind dive into the emotional core of Indian sports fandom. From Angry Rant Man’s YouTube meltdowns to the infamous 1996 Eden Gardens riot, our relationship with sport often crosses the line from passion to rage.

In this episode of Game Play Sport, Rahul De, Kailash Koushik, and Arvind Bharathi BN take us through the evolution of the gym culture in India — from its early associations with bodybuilding to its current wellness-oriented avatar built around curated routines, group classes, and lifestyle.