There are hopes of expanding the game globally and seeing it become an Olympic discipline
in India these days are spoiled. Their televisions and streaming services offer a mouth-watering menu of sporting fare. There’s football, from all the big European leagues; all kinds of combat sports; tennis, badminton and squash; and of course cricket from every corner of the country and the world. And from this week, Indian sports-lovers can feast once more on a local speciality: the Pro Kabaddi League .
Kabaddi is said to date back 4,000 years. As well as one of the world’s oldest sports, it is perhaps also its simplest. No ball is involved nor equipment needed; a patch of land suffices. This is divided equally between two teams of seven. They take turns to dispatch a “raider” into enemy territory. Once there the raider tries to tag as many opponents as possible, touch a line deep in their terrain and return home without getting captured.
For almost all of its existence, kabaddi has been the favourite sport of villages across India. But it has struggled to elevate itself beyond a rural pastime. Since the country’s independence 75 years ago, it has been overshadowed on the national stage first by hockey, then by cricket. But now things are changing, thanks mainly to theWhen it was launched in 2014, the PKL modelled itself on the Indian Premier League .
Perhaps most important, matches have been tailored for television. Red-brown mud fields have been replaced with purple-and-orange mats in air-conditioned stadiums, illuminated by swirling disco lights. Bollywood music blares from the stands. With games lasting only 40 minutes, action is frenetic and intense—made more so by rule tweaks like “do-or-die raids” and “super tackles”.last year, making kabaddi the most-viewed sport in India after cricket.
Flushed with success, the league’s organisers want to expand the game globally and to see kabaddi become an Olympic sport. Whether this would guarantee gold for India, however, is not at all certain. Kabbadi is already included in the Asian Games, and in the most recent, in 2018, India could come only third, behind Iran, the gold medallists, and South Korea. But for popularising an ancient, simple, yet exciting sport, that may be a price worth paying.
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