Global Esports is the only Indian team selected as a Riot-partnered team going into VCT 2023. The team had consistently performed within India since its early days and was considered one of the country's best chances on the international stage.
Global Esports will play in the Pacific League against Paper Rex, DRX, etc. The organization made several changes to its roster, keeping in mind the level of competition they will face in the international split of VCT 2023.
GE had set out to build a full ten-man roster consisting of talent from both India and abroad. Here is how the team is looking ahead of the VCT LOCK//IN tournament, which will kick off the season in February.
Global Esports has built a truly global roster for VCT 2023
The Global Esports roster currently consists of 9 players, a manager, and a 3-member coaching unit:
- Jordan "AYRIN" He
- Park "Bazzi" Jun-ki
- Kim "t3xture" Na-ra
- Ganesh "SkRossi" Gangadhar
- Michael "WRONSKI" Wronski
- Abhirup "Lightningfast" Choudhury
- Cahya "Monyet" Nugraha
- Akshay "KappA" Sinkar
- Jayanth "skillZ" Ramesh
- Vatsal "Vatsal" Uniyal, Manager
- Hong "Eraser" Chang-pyo, Head Coach
- Peter "Spin" Bradford, Assistant Coach
- Morgan "BigTime" Jay, Assistant Coach
The organization has put a lot of thought into putting the team together. They have brought in talent from abroad while retaining most Indian players from the earlier GE squad.
Foreign talent that has come to Global Esports
The biggest name to have been added to the GE roster is AYRIN. He is a Valorant player of Canadian origin who will be the in-game leader for the team. Before coming to GE, he played for the American organization XSET and led the team to the pinnacle of its success.
Under his leadership, XSET qualified for the VCT Masters in Copenhagen in 2022 as the first seed from North America and later for Champions 2022. In Champions 2022, they beat the likes of Fnatic and FunPlus Phoenix.
Two Korean players, Bazzi and t3xture, have also joined the roster. Bazzi has played for teams like On Sla2ers, Crazy Raccoon, and Cloud9 Korea before and is well-known for his superb performance as the star duelist of the teams he has played on. t3xture has moved to the Indian organization from DAMWON Gaming.
WRONSKI is coming to the team from Australia, where he played in the Oceania legs of the earlier seasons of the VCT.
Monyet used to play for ONIC G in Indonesia, who missed qualifying for Champions 2022 by a small margin.
Each of these players, except for AYRIN, used to play the Duelist/Chamber role on their teams. So it will be interesting to see how the decision to bring them on board for VCT 2023 plays out.
SkRossi and other retained Indian players in Global Esports
The organization has retained SkRossi, Lightningfast, KappA, and SkillZ to use the ten-man roster space provided by Riot. This ensures that the team can test out the waters for the first part of the tournament to see what is working best for them as a team.
This also ensures that Indian talent is not let go in an attempt to create a "global" roster while confirming the support of Indian fans, who would surely be quite unhappy if the organization released their entire Indian player base.
The entire team had been performing quite well and needed a bit of fine-tuning to perform their best at the topmost levels of the circuit. These changes will hopefully bring the roster to the level where they can go head-to-head against the rest of the regional teams.
The team will move to South Korea, where the Pacific League of VCT 2023 will be played. They will play their first match of the season LOCK//IN in Sao Paulo against EMEA's Team Vitality on February 23, 2023, at 10:30 PM IST.