India is home to more than 1.2 billion people. You would think that 11 of them would be decent soccer players.

You would be wrong.

I was reminded of this today when the Asian Football Confederation did its draw for the first round of 2018 World Cup qualifying.

And India, with its 1.2 billion people, is among the Asian confederation’s 12 bottom-feeders, per Fifa rankings. Along with countries who have a legitimate excuse as to why they are not even vaguely competent in soccer. Like Brunei, Bhutan, Yemen, Cambodia … which are poor or small or both.

India?

Those 1.2 billion people. The world’s 10th-biggest economy, according to 2013 UN figures. More and more people with leisure time in a rising business climate.

But no one who can play soccer.

As evidence we point to India’s failure to qualify for the 16-team Asian Cup, played last month. A tournament in which the UAE, with its 1 million citizens, finished third, and Australia, with its 23 million citizens, won the thing. India has 1,200 people for every one UAE citizen. It has 52 people for every Aussie.

We also note that India has never played in a World Cup and never had a really successful domestic soccer league — not even the hokie Indian Super League, the new confab that allegedly will turn India into a soccer country even though about half the players in the ISL were so old not even the Gulf leagues would touch them.

India is really good at one sport: cricket. It is occasionally competent in a few other global sports — badminton, field hockey, boxing, wrestling.

Cricket seems to choke out all other sports. Or maybe something about the game appeals to the Indian public in ways the other sports do not. Especially not soccer.

India currently is ranked No. 171 in the world by Fifa. Of 209 countries. It ranks behind Bangladesh, Guam and Laos (in Asia), who all enter World Cup qualifying in the second round, being ranked ahead of India.

This is ridiculous.

Something Must Be Done.

As a start, fire everyone working at the All India Football Federation, since they clearly have never accomplished anything, and hire a bunch of Germans. Or Spaniards. Or Aussies. Come up with a new plan, a new approach. A grassroots thing. India can’t be a world-beater in five years but it ought to be capable of making the World Cup within a decade. Remember, 1.2 billion people, world’s No 10 economy.

India gets Nepal in the first round, home and away, of the Asian 2018 qualifying and it is not at all clear India will survive. But if it does, it will go into the second round, in one of five groups of eight, and will be lucky not to finish last in its group.

It could be recalled that the U.S. was really bad at soccer not that long ago. Into the 1970s, at the least. The U.S. didn’t qualify for a World Cup for 40 years, from 1950 to 1990. But now it is a competent soccer nation, with seven consecutive World Cup appearances and a quarterfinal appearance in 2002, and generally is ranked somewhere in the top 20 in the world.

So it can be done. Turn yourself into something, in soccer.

Granted, the U.S. (and even Australia and Canada) had at least some soccer culture around, because of immigrants from soccer-mad nations. India seems to lack that.

But the sake of appearances (and India is as proud as any nation around), it ought to be able — in the margins of an enormous population and booming economy — to come up with a plan to make their soccer team at least competitive in Asia.

But then we are back to cricket. The Cricket World Cup begins this weekend, and India definitely can win it, and for the next six weeks or so India will be watching only its cricketers — and not the football guys who will be playing next month in the hope of staying alive for Russia 2018.