The Pune Marathas are a professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team based in

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. The Marathas are one of the first eight franchises of the

Elite Football League of India The Elite Football League of India (EFLI) is a professional American football league based in India. It was founded with eight franchises in 2011, and now has 23 franchises throughout South Asia, among whom 20 located in India, two in Sri Lanka ...

(EFLI) and compete in its inaugural season in

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

as a member of the West Division, where they became the first ever champions of an Elite Bowl. The training sessions was a five-week training camp led by former

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

player and

Arena Football League The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...

coach

Doug Plank Douglas Walter Plank (born March 4, 1953) is a former American football safety and coach in the National Football League. Early life Plank attended Norwin High School in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, where he played baseball, basketball, an ...

. The team's debut match incidentally is the league's first match as well. The Marathas began their season by playing against the

Mumbai Gladiators The Mumbai Gladiators are a professional American football team based in Mumbai, India. The Gladiators are one of the first eight franchises of the Elite Football League of India (EFLI) and compete in its inaugural season in 2012 File:2012 E ...

in November 2012.

References

{{Elite Football League of India Elite Football League of India American football teams in India American football teams established in 2011 Sport in Pune 2011 establishments in Maharashtra