India has no indigenous version of football, but many of the players on the beach were successful athletes in other sports, including judo, basketball and kabaddi, a team sport in which players hold their breath and grapple with one another. Several Gladiators said they had been only dimly aware of football, though they knew of films like “The Longest Yard” and “Any Given Sunday.” None of them had played even so much as a down of the game before starting training camp a year ago in Mumbai and Pune, about 100 miles to the southeast.

“We didn’t even know it was called American football,” said Linesh Mane, a 24-year-old defensive back and former basketball player. “We thought it was rugby.”

He added, “It’s much more difficult than rugby.”

The players on the beach were actually on an off-season break, after the league’s inaugural season, which was played over about six weeks in the summer and broadcast this fall. The team was working out at the decidedly non-gridiron-like setting because it does not have its own field. Shailesh Devrukhkar, the head coach and a former rugby player and former police commando deployed in sensitive situations like hostage negotiations, expected the team to rent one when it began preparing in earnest for next season, which is expected to begin in the spring.

Investors Include Warner

Under Whelan’s frenzied leadership, the league has raised $8.5 million from investors, including Kurt Warner, the retired N.F.L. quarterback, and Brandon Chillar, a former St. Louis Ram and Green Bay Packer of Indian descent, and he is confident others investors will come on board. To keep costs to a minimum, the league stopped paying its players in the off-season and, in the first season, dispensed with stadiums, tickets, tailgating and other trappings of the American football experience. Instead, the league’s eight teams played an entire season’s worth of games at a stadium in Colombo, Sri Lanka, which was chosen partly so the Pakistani team could play Indian teams without traveling to India. Hourlong tapes of each game were shown on television over a three-month period.

The Elite Football League of India will ditch that strategy in its second season, when games in several Indian cities will be televised live. Despite the low level of play, the league’s founders claim that millions of people are interested in American sports and will watch if Indians and Pakistanis are competing, even though most Indians do not even know the league exists and cricket remains far and away the most popular sport in the country.