India, Dec. 14 -- Pickleball may borrow the language of tennis, the touch of table tennis and the geometry of squash, but in India it is rapidly becoming its own dialect. And who better to illustrate this evolution than the dozen-odd athletes who took part last week in the inaugural Indian Pickleball League (IPBL) in Delhi, players for whom taking up the sport wasn't just a change in equipment, but a fundamental genre shift. From tennis hitters learning to "unhit", to squash players slowing their instincts, to swimmers picking up a paddle for the first time, these athletes are discovering that pickleball is not a softer version of any racquet sport, it is a new game with its own physics, psychology and culture. This story dives into the r...