India’s League of Legends team: The second lives behind their 2026 Asian Games dream

It’s about 10 pm in Delhi, on the finish of an extended working weekday, when Mihir Ranjan sits down at his laptop at dwelling. Nothing significantly uncommon about that. The IIM Ahmedabad graduate works at McKinsey & Firm and spends a lot of his day in entrance of a display screen, surrounded by the acquainted rhythms of company life. There are conferences, displays, spreadsheets, deadlines.

However now, late at evening, the 25-year-old has bought one thing else to sit up for.

“Now my second life begins,” he tells Sportstar.

He slips into one thing comfy, closes the door to his room and retains his cellphone on silent, so he gained’t be disturbed. He places on his headset and joins his teammates on-line on the League of Legends server. He’s not Mihir Ranjan anymore however ‘ Lotus’.

Becoming a member of in from Kochi is Akshaj ‘Kat Bot’ Shenoy, the crew’s 24-year-old captain who’s getting ready for his MBA whereas serving to run his father’s sanitaryware companies. From Better Noida, cloud engineering intern Aakash ‘ Infi’ Shandilya logs in. In Aligarh, Ahmed Shahid Israr, ‘ Nero’ to his teammates, is preparing on the finish of a day he’s spent learning to be a chemical engineer. Sanindhya ‘ Deadcorporal’ Malik will be part of from Mauritius, the place he’s working to construct the island’s telecommunications infrastructure. Rahul ‘ Bob’ Bisht, a product designer and entrepreneur from Bengaluru, is there as effectively.

Six males with fully totally different lives, separated by hundreds of kilometres and, in a single case, a whole nation, are about to turn out to be one crew. However they aren’t simply enjoying for enjoyable. They’re getting ready for the Asian Video games in Aichi-Nagoya, the place they are going to be representing India in League of Legends.

For many Indian athletes heading to the Asian Video games, preparation for a significant multi-sport occasion entails the acquainted rituals of elite sport: camps, coaches, physiotherapists, power and conditioning classes, teammates residing collectively, coaching services and months spent in each other’s firm.

For India’s League of Legends crew, preparation can look very totally different.

None of them makes their residing from the sport. Everyone seems to be squeezing in apply time at evening round their work and examine commitments. Their coaching floor isn’t an academy or a nationwide camp however the web. Their assembly room is on Discord. They’ve by no means frolicked collectively outdoors of competitions, the place video games are performed over LAN (Native Space Community). The one time they’ll really play collectively in particular person will probably be after they attain Nagoya in a couple of weeks’ time.

They do all of this whereas working in an Indian esports ecosystem that’s nonetheless tiny in contrast with these of the nations they’re making an attempt to compete towards.

League of Legends is a multiplayer on-line battle area, or MOBA. 5 gamers work collectively to destroy the opposing crew’s base, with every participant taking over a special position. They must make choices individually and collectively, typically in fractions of a second.

A participant’s means to regulate his champion — what gamers name “micro” — is just the muse. The bigger query is what 5 gamers do collectively: the place they transfer, after they struggle, which aims they pursue and the way they reply to the opposition.

“You’ll be able to’t simply play with the particular person if he’s simply good. You must have related targets,” says Shenoy.

That distinction issues.

On the highest degree, League is as a lot about how 5 folks operate collectively as how effectively any considered one of them can play. And constructing that understanding has been significantly troublesome for India’s gamers as a result of they’ve by no means had the infrastructure that exists within the recreation’s strongest nations.

But the crew exists as a result of considered one of its gamers determined that India’s greatest people ought to cease enjoying individually.

Akshaj had watched good Indian gamers turn out to be scattered throughout totally different groups, typically enjoying alongside buddies quite than the strongest gamers accessible. If the pool of elite gamers in India was small, his considering went, why not put as a lot of them as attainable on one crew?

So in 2022 he began reaching out.

There was no nationwide scouting programme figuring out the gamers. No academy had developed them. No centralised system had introduced them collectively.

They discovered each other on-line.

The crew that finally emerged grew to become one of many strongest within the Indian League of Legends scene. And when League of Legends was launched as a medal sport on the Asian Video games, the identical group would go on to qualify for the Video games and compete in Hangzhou, the place they finally completed fifth.

Akshaj is aware of all too effectively simply how totally different his crew is.

“On the final Asian Video games in Hangzhou, we had been on the Video games village meals court docket when one of many Indian monitor and area athletes got here as much as us and mentioned, ‘You guys are from the esports crew, proper?’” Akshaj remembers.

“I used to be like, ‘How did you guess?’ And he advised me it was as a result of we had been the one crew that got here in several sizes and shapes. That was fairly humorous, nevertheless it was additionally very correct.”

The gamers don’t look, reside or practice like what most individuals think about an athlete ought to.

However the Video games have given them one thing the home ecosystem couldn’t: a motive to see themselves as athletes representing their nation. Video games that had been performed in bedrooms, places of work and college rooms immediately had a national-team consequence.

For some, it additionally supplied the primary actual proof to their households that this was greater than a pastime.

Mihir’s mother and father, for instance, had lengthy struggled to grasp precisely how critical his gaming was. That modified in a very unusual manner when officers from the Nationwide Anti-Doping Company turned up at their home earlier than the 2023 Asian Video games. “I had been knowledgeable that I’d most likely be examined sooner or later, however nonetheless it was startling when officers arrived at my dwelling in Delhi and advised me I needed to pee in a cup whereas they watched,” he remembers.

However what was initially a bit startling became a flex.

“My mother and father had been at dwelling when all this occurred. Till that time, they had been all the time having this little bit of disbelief over how actual my gaming was. I believe they thought I used to be making a few of it up and I’m not likely going to the Asian Video games,” he remembers.

The dope check modified that. His mother and father started questioning the official about the place he was from and whether or not he was from the federal government. “For them, it was most likely a bizarre matter of delight. The truth that I used to be drug examined really gave some legitimacy to the entire thing,” he remembers.

There’s a sure irony within the story of India’s League crew. The gamers are legit sufficient to be subjected to the identical anti-doping protocols as different athletes at a significant multi-sport occasion. However they aren’t but enjoying in an ecosystem able to making all of them full-time professionals.

The crew’s alternative of apply time, late into the evening, makes full sense while you realise that’s the one time all of them must spare.

Mihir has made a deliberate alternative to not turn out to be a full-time League participant. It’s not as a result of he lacks the mentality of knowledgeable athlete. Fairly the other.

“I do take into account myself knowledgeable sports activities particular person, from a mentality perspective,” he says.

He has been enjoying the sport for 13 years. He nonetheless loves it. He’s even satisfied his girlfriend to play. And when he faces a greater crew, the aggressive intuition kicks in. “I’ve a drive and a ardour in me that I need to get pretty much as good as these guys, and I need to beat them sometime,” he says.

However ardour and economics are various things.

For Mihir, turning into a full-time League participant in India didn’t make monetary sense. The Indian ecosystem was not developed sufficient to help the kind of skilled life he wished.

“If I had been to do that full time, how a lot can I actually not even like, how a lot cash can I make? I don’t assume anybody does sports activities for cash; you do it for the love of the sport,” he says. “At that time, it was simply turning into a bit obvious to me that I won’t be able to maintain the type of life-style I need. On this recreation no less than.”

That call displays the truth of the Indian recreation.

They’ve gamers adequate to signify their nation on the Asian Video games, however they don’t but have an ecosystem able to making all of them full-time skilled athletes.

So that they work and examine. After which they play. Then they get again to working.

Rahul Bisht’s life is one other instance.

A BITS Pilani laptop science graduate, Rahul is the oldest member of the squad at 29. He has spent eight to 10 years as a product designer and says he has labored with a number of corporations. One in every of his tasks was the preliminary design of the Paytm card machine in 2017 and 2018.

“I believe that’s most likely one thing that’s had rather more of an affect than the rest I’ve completed,” he says.

He has since moved on to different issues and is now working his personal expertise startup. He has additionally tried his hand at different companies, together with a standard haircutting salon, which he finally offered.

Gaming, although, has been the one fixed in his life. Besides, he has to prioritise.

“There’s no different time during which to practise aside from late at evening. That’s after we are all free. We’ll practise collectively till about 12 am. After that I’ll play a couple of private video games. Then I’ll work for the following few hours. I most likely sleep for about 4 or 5 hours an evening,” he says.

Sanindhya’s state of affairs takes that contradiction to an nearly comedian excessive.

He works for Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd. (TCIL), a Authorities of India firm. He’s presently primarily based in Mauritius, engaged on telecommunications infrastructure. He will get up round 7 a.m., goes to work and returns dwelling earlier than logging into League along with his teammates.

His day job is sustaining telecommunications infrastructure overseas. His second job, successfully, is utilizing that infrastructure to organize for the Asian Video games in Japan.

However typically even that connection fails.

Late final yr, a submarine fibre optic cable serving Mauritius was broken, leaving the web operational however too gradual for Sanindhya to play correctly. For a couple of month, he couldn’t practise on the degree he wanted.

“All that’s irritating. And when I’ve my common job to do, it will get actually tiring to play after that. However when you’ve got a objective, when you’ve got ardour, it doesn’t matter. You simply do it. I don’t get drained after I log in and practise with my crew. The tiredness simply goes away,” he says.

Ahmed has had his personal issues, although not fairly on that scale. He admits he’s misplaced video games for his crew a few occasions after shedding the Wi-Fi sign in Aligarh.

However for Ahmed, the youngest member of the crew, the issue has typically been explaining to folks that there’s even a sport to organize for.

When he utilized to his college for a no-objection certificates as a result of he would miss courses for the Asian Video games, he needed to clarify what esports was, what recreation he performed and why it certified as a sporting occasion.

“They wished to know if I even counted as an athlete, and I needed to inform them sure, I do rely as an athlete. It’s a medal occasion,” he says.

Issues are beginning to change, even when the tempo is incremental.

Mihir observed it on the final Asian Video games itself. The opposite athletes they met didn’t essentially know that esports was an occasion, however they had been curious.

“A whole lot of athletes had been much more open-minded than I anticipated,” he says. He thinks it’s as a result of the Video games coincided with the growth in cell video games akin to PUBG.

“Once you play one thing like that, you type of realise, like, okay, there may be even inside one thing historically referred to as a online game, there are ranges,” he says.

“And the second you determine that, you’ll be able to have respect for anybody who has that degree of ability or mastery or proficiency in something.”

However each Ahmed and Mihir know these questions would have been simpler to reply had India possessed the type of League ecosystem that exists elsewhere.

It doesn’t.

Formally launched in 2009, League of Legends has an enormous world participant base, with an estimated eight million gamers competing concurrently at its peak. India gives solely a fraction of that. Akshaj estimates that the official Indian League neighborhood has round 4,000 to five,000 members, with maybe 1,000 lively gamers. “We have now most likely one thousandth or one ten thousandth of the participant base that South Korea has,” he says.

And there’s a extra speedy drawback.

India doesn’t have a devoted League of Legends server.

The gamers due to this fact use the Singapore server. At dwelling, they expertise comparatively excessive latency of about 80-90 milliseconds, the time their inputs take to journey to the server and again. Within the strongest League ecosystems, gamers can function at dramatically decrease latency.

On the Asian Video games, the place the sport is performed on a neighborhood server, the delay can fall to nearly zero.

For a participant who has spent years compensating for the delay, that creates a peculiar downside: the circumstances immediately turn out to be higher, however the participant isn’t essentially instantly higher in them.

“Taking part in at excessive ping is like enjoying with a weighted vest. The participant turns into accustomed to the additional resistance, unconsciously compensating for the delay. At a match, the vest comes off, and immediately all the pieces is quicker,” Mihir says.

That’s one motive why the crew’s preparation for Nagoya is so difficult. They’re making an attempt to coach themselves to compete at a degree they can not absolutely reproduce at dwelling.

However the server is just a part of the issue.

The very depth of the competitors in India is totally different.

Each League participant can attain the best rank on his personal server, however these rankings don’t essentially imply the identical factor throughout areas.

“A participant who’s Challenger (mathematically restricted to the highest 200 gamers or about 0.01 per cent of the gamers of any given server) on the Singapore server may very well be in Diamond (prime 1-2 per cent) on the Korean server. The competitors there may be a lot deeper,” says Mihir.

India’s gamers can due to this fact dominate the ecosystem accessible to them with out essentially being examined towards the very best gamers on the planet.

Hangzhou, the place the crew finally completed fifth, supplied essentially the most painful demonstration of what meaning.

India got here by means of the group stage however bumped into Vietnam within the quarterfinals.

The 2 matches lasted lower than 20 minutes every. Video games between equally matched opponents often final between 30 and 35 minutes.

“Vietnam destroyed us,” Mihir admits.

It was not merely that Vietnam had higher gamers. The Indian gamers realised they had been working in a basically totally different system.

The Vietnamese crew had gamers who had been enjoying professionally for years. They had been salaried. That they had competed on the World Championship. Their matches and careers had been documented and simply accessible to review.

Though India now has an official crew, with the gamers competing beneath the banner of S8UL, an esports and content material creation platform in India, there’s nonetheless very a lot a spot between them and the highest groups on the planet.

In opposition to Vietnam, the Indians found that a few of the issues they believed had been attainable limits of the sport weren’t limits in any respect. Gamers may make mechanical performs that they merely had not encountered typically sufficient in home competitors to anticipate.

“They had been doing issues that we didn’t know had been attainable,” says Mihir.

The outcome pressured them to rethink what “good” meant.

That they had identified they had been sturdy.

They found that they had not been sturdy sufficient.

Forward of the 2026 Video games, the crew has completed what it may to shut that hole. Two gamers, Ahmed and Rahul, had been introduced in earlier this yr to strengthen the outfit. They’ve arrange scrims with prime groups from South and West Asia. They don’t simply play. They analyse outcomes and performs, a lot in the way in which different sports activities groups may conduct post-match video evaluation.

There’s quite a lot of work that occurs earlier than they even enter a recreation.

After which, after all of the evaluation, they nonetheless must play.

The gamers additionally reject the concept as a result of the game is performed sitting down, the physique doesn’t matter.

Aakash’s physique wouldn’t look misplaced in a weightlifting squad. He’s an everyday on the health club. Akshaj goes to the health club and typically performs badminton. Different members of the crew make an effort to stroll, train or just get away from their desks between classes.

The reason being partly efficiency and partly survival.

“They spend hours sitting. Their backs damage. Their wrists take punishment. Their focus has to stay excessive for prolonged durations,” says Aakash.

“The extra bodily match we’re, the higher we play. It’s about having the ability to sit down at a pc for hours and nonetheless have a functioning physique and a pointy thoughts on the finish of it.”

As a lot as they fight, the gamers know there’s a restrict to how a lot they’ll enhance beneath their present circumstances.

A few of it, like the dearth of a rustic server, is out of their fingers.

There’s additionally the query of whether or not they may turn out to be a greater crew in the event that they lived and skilled collectively, as the easiest groups do.

Most likely.

However for now, even that’s unrealistic.

“If we sit collectively and practice for six months with out doing the rest, we most likely can be higher, however proper now even if you happen to put us in the identical metropolis it wouldn’t work out,” says Sanindhya. “All of us have our personal lives to reside, and we might most likely nonetheless be enjoying out of our properties.”

Regardless of the challenges, there are moments when all the pieces comes collectively.

To qualify for the Asian Video games this time, India needed to come from behind towards Jordan. They had been hundreds of gold behind and down on aims, with their qualification hopes at stake.

They recovered and gained.

“That was a extremely hype second,” says Aakash.

It’s that kind of comeback that has stored the crew going by means of the much less glamorous elements of the job, the late-night apply classes, the day jobs, the college commitments and the hours spent enjoying on a server outdoors the nation.

There’s additionally the easy pleasure of being across the folks whose careers they as soon as adopted from a distance.

In Hangzhou, Aakash met Neeraj Chopra in addition to different athletes from the Indian contingent. However he was way more excited when he met Lee Sang-hyeok, higher referred to as Faker, the legendary Korean League participant he had grown up watching on-line.

“He was all the time the man I grew up watching on streams or in World Championships. It’s like if you happen to bought to fulfill Sachin [Tendulkar] or [Lionel] Messi,” Aakash says.

For a League of Legends participant, Faker occupies a spot within the sporting creativeness that’s troublesome to elucidate to somebody who has by no means performed the sport.

For Aakash, assembly him was one of many highlights of the Video games.

However maybe most particular of all is just getting the prospect to signify the nation.

Folded away in Mihir’s cabinet is a reminder of what all these late nights are for. It’s a few blue T-shirts with India written on them, his package from Hangzhou.

“It’s mainly ardour that’s driving all of us. It’s not like we make a residing out of this. I’m not somebody who likes to point out off my accomplishments. I don’t go and inform folks about the truth that I’ve performed for India on the Asian Video games.

“However I don’t assume there’s something as particular as getting the chance to put on the India jersey. I gave one set to my grandparents, and it was one of the sentimental moments of my life.

“It didn’t matter what sort of sportsperson I used to be. It was the India jersey. And while you put on it, all the pieces we do appears to be value it,” he says.

Printed on Sep 15, 2026

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