Game Play Sport with Rahul, Arvind, and Kailash
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Is India Chasing the Wrong Sports Goals?
The finale of Game Play Sport brings together hosts Rahul De, Arvind Bharathi, and Kailash Kaushik with ten students in a Surrounded-style conversation that opens up some of the most personal and dissonant questions in Indian sport today. We listen closely to what young people see changing around them — the spaces they grew up in, the pressures they feel, and the futures they imagine for themselves.
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Why India Struggles to Support Athletes?
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.
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Can India become a global Esports powerhouse?
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.
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The Fine Line between Gaming and Gambling
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.
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Are We Killing the Joy of Play?
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?
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How Chess Reinvented itself in the Age of AI
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.
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Is the Future of Sport Public or Private?
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.
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What does Equality in Sport really look like?
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.
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How streaming is changing Indian sport?
In this episode of Game Play Sport, we explore how OTT platforms like Netflix are reshaping the way sport is consumed in India.
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Why do we take Sports so personally?
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.
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Who is the Gym really for?
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.
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From Gully Cricket to Gold Medals: Where Does Play End and Sport Begin?
Why do adults stop playing? In this debut episode of Game Play Sport, we explore the surprising difference between game, play, and sport — and what India loses when play disappears from our lives.












