NEW DELHI, INDIA—If Arun Verma had been on a sports field in North America instead of one here in northern India, he surely would have sent pro scouts scrambling for their cellphones and notebooks.

That’s what happens when you’ve never played organized baseball and you can throw a pitch 96 miles an hour.

Verma, 20, was among 100 students who showed up on Thursday in a dusty neighbourhood in northern New Delhi for an unlikely baseball tryout camp.

Three years ago, a U.S.-based player agent organized The Million Dollar Arm, a reality TV show that aired in India and gave some 38,000 Indians the chance to pitch their way to a pro baseball contract. In the end, two then-19-year-olds did just that.

After signing up with the prominent baseball player agent Jeff Bernstein, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, who’d both grown up playing cricket and had never seen a baseball before the show, both signed minor-league deals with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

While Patel has been released and is back in India, the left-handed Singh — who won $100,000 as the winner of the first Million Dollar Arm — is sizzling in Class-A ball.

In appearances with three Pirates minor-league affiliates, Singh is 2-1 with a 1.96 ERA. He’s walked three and struck out 13 in 18 1/3 innings.

More important, Singh’s success suggests there may be others in this country of 1.2 billion who merit a closer look.

So after a two-year hiatus, The Million Dollar Arm is back.

For the next several months, five SUVs with employees armed with buckets of baseballs, netting and a radar gun will be traversing India, moving from large cities such as New Delhi, Bangalore and Goa to small villages in rural India, swathes of this massive country where only a few years ago some 80 per cent of the local populace didn’t know what the Internet was.

In all, the staff of Million Dollar Arm plan to visit 60 locations this summer. Although the competition isn’t being broadcast this year because of ESPN scheduling conflicts, as many as five finalists will be taken to China for further training and tryouts in front of Major League Baseball scouts.

“What’s amazing about this program is it’s unbiased, clean and simple,” says Vivek Daglur, a Bangalore-based marketing executive and one of the Million Dollar Arm organizers.

With baseball, Daglur says, there’s no politics. Either you can throw 80 miles an hour and move on in the competition, or you can’t.

“You don’t need to know English right away and you can be from the smallest Indian village and still have a chance to make big money as a pro if you can throw hard,” he says. “That doesn’t happen in India. We have players on our national field hockey team who have to stage hunger strikes to get paid. It’s pathetic but it’s our reality.”

Daglur is convinced India is fertile ground for pro sports.

“This is a country where playing sports can help to get you a simple job, and so you have people who have a single meal a day and yet run for their training for 20 kilometres a day,” he said. “The determination you see here is unparalleled.”

The latest version of Million Dollar Arm will cost about $250,000. Its biggest expense will be a fleet of five SUVs that will drive through the streets and rutted back roads of this country with a decal of the Pirates’ player Singh and the slogan “Ab India bhi khelega,” or “Now India will also play.” Major League Baseball has pledged to help train the program's finalists.

Daglur said he expects to stage the competition in India for at least the next five years.

On Thursday afternoon, under a scorching afternoon sun, contestants were allowed to throw a few warm-up pitches into a blue vinyl net that was hung up on a metal frame in front of a radar gun.

When the contestants were ready, they were given three pitches. If they threw 80 miles an hour or harder, they were given an extra two.

“Remember, push off with your back foot,” said a young instructor wearing a blue Kansas City Royals T-shirt.

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His young charge nodded. There was nothing for him to push off of, however, since there was no pitcher’s mound. He was throwing from a rolled-up tarp that could have come from a minigolf course.

The pitch sailed over the netting and rattled off the white cement wall of a local college.

“Good,” said another volunteer. “That was 81.”

Most of the offerings were more meagre, ranging from 50 to 75 miles an hour.

Baseball, of course, remains a foreign concept in most corners of India.

Sanveer Singh, a javelin thrower who managed on Thursday to throw one pitch 87 miles an hour, said India would surely embrace baseball if it had a homegrown star to cheer.

“The key is for us to have our own sportsman,” he said.

Singh, a shy but stocky 21-year-old college student with thick legs, said he prepared for Thursday’s tryout by supplementing his regular workout with a one-kilogram iron ball. He practiced throwing the ball at least seven or eight times every second day.

“I don’t know if that’s best or not,” he shrugged.

A visitor asked Singh what he knew about baseball.

“I know there’s a home and four bases gets you one run and it’s a home run if it leaves the grounds,” he said.

Verma, whose 96-mile-an-hour heater ripped a hole in the new blue vinyl netting standing some 60 feet away, said that after learning of Singh’s pro contract, he started watching early morning broadcasts of Major League Baseball, although he still can’t name any pro players or teams.

“Most of the people in India still don’t know about baseball,” said Verma.

That may be, but most of the people anywhere can’t throw a baseball 96 miles an hour.

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