The Pickleball courts are fuller now in Bandra, says Nikhil Mehrotra, than they were a year ago. Mehrotra started playing Pickleball, an offbeat sport that is taking over Mumbai one court at a time, in 2023. In the last one year, the game, which is nothing like table tennis or tennis even, but looks quite similar, has seen a growing number of Mumbaikars take to it.

Simply defined, Pickleball is a racquet or paddle sport that is played between two or four people, who use the smooth-face of the paddle to hit a perforated hollow plastic ball. Mehrotra is only one of the many Pickleball players in Mumbai right now. The Mumbaikar, who is a film writer, explains, "I started playing with my group of friends in 2023. Initially, we used to book a turf and play cricket. During that time, one of them had started playing Pickleball and then we said let's try this sport, it is really easy."