After King of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan’s successful endeavor with buying a sports team for the Premier League matches, it is now Abhishek Bachchan who has gone out of his profession and taken the role of a celebrity entrepreneur. He, too, has invested in sports by buying a pro kabaddi franchise.
He is now the proud owner of Jaipur franchise of the Indian Premier League style professional kabaddi league.
According to him, kabaddi is the game that represents the true spirit of India and he is happy to be a part of its national promotion.The professional kabaddi league is the brainchild of industrialist Anand Mahindra and sports commentator Charu Sharma. The league has eight city based franchises: Mumbai, Kolkata, Patna, Jaipur, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi. Abhishek’s team is called Pink Panthers and he has made sure that he remains part of each and every detail of the team and matches.
There is definitely a reason why Abhishek has chosen kabaddi over other popular sports and the reason is that he is attached to the game because of his childhood connection with it. He says that this father, the legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan, introduced him to it and throughout school he participated and played the game.
On being asked how does he feel about his new venture, Abhishek said, "It is a matter of huge pride. It is a sport where the amount of skill required is immense. Having played sports at school level and being a sports enthusiast, it's very exciting for me to be able to be part of this endeavor."
The busy actor has actually taken a six-week off from shooting to devote all his time and energy into supervising the team. He even said that when he invests his time into something, he becomes very emotional and getting attached to that thing comes naturally to him. He has no qualms in saying that he is emotionally attached to each member of his team.
Abhishek has been constantly tweeting about the progress of his team and about the game of kabaddi itself, to generate enthusiasm about it in the public. The inaugural match took place quite recently at the NSCI Stadium, Mumbai and it was a star studded affair. To support Abhishek and his team many celebrities showed up like, Amitabh, Aishwarya, Jaya, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar.
Abhishek’s recent movies have not done very well and his career graph has been tipping a little low, although he has some very interesting movies in his kitty. But with this new investment of his we wish that he becomes more and more successful, so much so that the word kabaddi becomes synchronized with his name.