A new Spinoff investigation reveals how a high-profile attempt to bring Indian basketball into New Zealand’s top league ended in chaos and walkouts, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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A short, unhappy season ending in disaster
On May 22, the Indian Panthers withdrew from New Zealand’s National Basketball League, officially ending a season that had already been suspended over “sufficiently serious” allegations. The franchise had been hyped as a groundbreaking move to connect Indian basketball with the NZ sporting scene by creating an Auckland-based team backed by India’s own pro league.
Instead, it managed just nine games and zero wins while staff and players cycled in and out. Head coach Miles Pearce quit after game one and key overseas players never arrived; by the time players boycotted a scheduled fixture in late April, the project was effectively over. The remainder of the 2025 season, which ended on Sunday, was contested by the league’s 11 remaining teams, with all Panthers results scrubbed from the record.
No training, no plan
As reported in a major investigation by James Borrowdale in The Spinoff this morning, many of the team’s on-court problems stemmed from its operational disarray. Veteran player Leon Henry, lured out of retirement to captain the Panthers, describes a team without a training programme or any apparent strategic oversight. There were no full scrimmages, no team meetings and no organised off-court conditioning. “In lieu of training, the team would merely assemble at the venue a couple of hours before a game to do what they could as they awaited tip-off,” James writes.
When interim coach Jonathan Goodman took a holiday mid-season and neither CEO Parveen Batish nor GM Arran Batish returned from Melbourne in time for the next match, players were left to run the team themselves. The Panthers were repeatedly thrashed – by margins approaching 50 points – and never showed signs of improvement.
Unpaid wages and walkouts: the downfall of the NBL’s Indian Panthers
A litany of money problems
Behind the scenes, finances unravelled just as fast. Borrowdale’s story paints a picture of systemic non-payment: of players, support staff and suppliers. Three Indian imports lived in an Airbnb with insufficient funds for food, relying at times on charity and rival clubs for help.
Local suppliers were also burned. The Herald’s Benjamin Plummer reported in May that small merchandising company Pure Athletic was chasing $21,000 for t-shirts, while Makers Merch had gone to the Disputes Tribunal over unpaid invoices. Speaking to Borrowdale, Batish admitted the organisation had been “slow at making some payments” and blamed the cashflow issues on sluggish sponsorship uptake and the Indian community’s lack of early support. He insisted all debts would be repaid, but many of those owed – including some players – remain unconvinced.
A lack of Indian players exacerbated team’s problems
Part of the difficulty in building community support may have stemmed from the team’s failure to reflect its own identity. The “Indian” Panthers fielded just three Indian players all season, with the rest of the squad made up of local journeymen and short-term fill-ins. Most of the Indian contingent never received visas, and some reportedly declined to travel once word of conditions in New Zealand reached them.
Basketball veteran Jeff Green told Newstalk ZB the franchise’s purpose was never truly about long-term participation in the New Zealand league. Instead, he believes it was a “Trojan horse” aimed at securing a back-door entry into the more lucrative Australian NBL – a theory supported, he said, by the fact that the Panthers’ financial backers were all based across the Tasman. If that was indeed the plan, it now lies in ruins.
