Akshaj Shenoy is 24 and heading back to the Asian Games, but this time not as a student juggling exams, but as the captain of India’s League of Legends team. The Kochi-based pro isn’t just leading the charge; he’s anchoring a roster where four of the six players carried the torch from Hangzhou, where India finished fifth. "We look back at Hangzhou with a lot of pride, but also knowing that we could have gone further," Shenoy told Timesofindia.com. The hunger is real. The experience is now on their side.
The squad isn’t a random collection of streamers. After Hangzhou, the core group kept grinding together in domestic and South Asian circuits. That continuity paid off when S8UL signed the roster in 2025, providing the structured training environment they lacked before. The results? A title in Legends Ascend South Asia and a fifth-place finish in the LCP Promotion Wild Card Playoffs. S8UL co-founder Animesh Agarwal credits their shared history, noting the team spent years "adapting to different competitive environments and developing a strong understanding of each other's game."
But the path to Aichi-Nagoya isn’t just about game time. For most of these players, esports has to fit around real life. Shenoy is prepping for an MBA and helping his father’s business, logging practice sessions from 8 pm to 1 am. His teammates include an IIM Ahmedabad graduate in Delhi, a cloud engineering intern in Noida, and two newcomers: Ahmed Shahid from Aligarh and 29-year-old product designer Rahul Bisht from Bengaluru. They are six different lives converging on one objective.
League of Legends is a brutal 5v5 strategy game where communication is as vital as mechanical skill. Each player controls a specific role—Top, Jungle, Mid, ADC, or Support—working to destroy the enemy Nexus. "You're constantly thinking about where the opponents could be," Shenoy explained. "At the same time, you're managing your own resources, positioning, timing..." It’s a mental chess match that demands five minds thinking as one. India’s challenge isn’t finding talent; it’s having enough high-level competition to sharpen it.
The team arrives in Japan with a clear target: beat that fifth-place finish. The stakes are higher now that the players have tasted the top tier. They know what it takes to compete with Asia’s best. The next time they step into the lobby, it’s not just for fun. It’s for the nation.