Kabaddi: The sport that has done the nation proud

the World Champions!(men on the left and women on the right)

While growing up in a little town of India, I didn’t get to see a lot of things. Things like malls, Coffee joints, McDonalds, big buildings, they were all reserved for my TV sets.

My real world consisted of sights like watching kids playing Cricket, Badminton, Kabaddi and Kho-Kho on the streets and grounds.

Kho-Kho needed a ground so it was just a school affair. Kabaddi for one was one game which was played in every street of my town. Kids could be seen chanting “Kabaddi Kabaddi” every evening in every nook and corner of the mohallas (colonies).

Needless to say, I was one among them. I loved playing the game. To the readers who are not acquainted with it, it’s a fairly simple and cost effective game. Rather, it might be the cheapest game for it needs no equipments whatsoever. You just need 6-7 players on each team and a way to draw the centre margin. See, No cost involved at all!

It involves a little bit of wrestling, looking a bit like rugby but being a lot less dangerous.

Basically, as cricket is a game of batsmen and bowlers, it’s a game of raiders and defenders.

In an official Kabaddi game there are 7 players on each side.

Teams take turns sending a “raider” to the opposite team’s half, where the goal is to tag or wrestle (“confine”) members of the opposite team before returning to the home half. Tagged members are “out” and temporarily sent off the field. During the entire process the raider has to keep speaking “Kabaddi Kabaddi” without breaking his breath.

The goal of the defenders is to stop the raider from returning to the home side before taking a breath. If any of the seven players cross the lobby without touching the raider he will be declared as “out”.

Each time when a player is “out”, the opposing team earns a point. A team scores a bonus of two points, called a “lona“, if the entire opposing team is declared “out”. At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins.

Enough said about rules, we should move further, shall we?

There have been 4 Kabaddi World Cups being held so far and India has a clean sheet in terms of record. For the matter of fact, as we speak here, Indians have just defeated arch rivals Pakistan to win their 4^th consecutive Cup.

Oh! And I nearly missed; the Women’s team too just beat the Kiwis to secure the Cup yet again.

Yeah, that’s how good we are in the game.

India not only plays the game well but it is the birthplace of the entire concept. Much like Buddhism (a little exaggeration there, but please get the connection without the hoopla!) Kabaddi originated in India then getting via Sri Lanka in south and Afghanistan is north it reached Europe, Africa and the Americas.

In the ongoing edition of the World Cup 20 teams are participating ranging from Kenya to New Zealand.

Around 200 crores are spent on the sports globally per annum and given the fact that it requires no equipment other than uniform and a stadium, it speaks volume about the popularity of the sport.

India Has won seven gold medals in Asian Games.

Having said all that, if I were to ask a kid about how many players are there in a Kabaddi team, he would not be able to answer. Even if I tried the same trick on their parents, the chances of getting a right answer (which is 7) is slim.

So why is that the case?

After last World Cup victory, the Indian team couldn’t get a train back home and they had to wait on the station for quite a long time. They were holding the cup in hands.

Imagine Indian Cricket team being periled similarly? We would have blamed our government for not taking care of the athletes properly. Hell, they would have never faced this trouble for they never travel by train, which of course is the medium for common people and not “Cricket boys”. It’s beneath them.

Other than the Kabaddi boards and federations and a handful of former and present players, no one seem to care about the game in India. The government has never been known to be too interested in recreational activities like sports that too Kabaddi. We don’t care for anything not named cricket either, do we?

Every human needs some motivation to succeed.

In sports, athletes other than cricketers are human too. They too would love to gain some fan following, a little cheer when they win the biggest trophy in their game consecutively for 3 (soon to be 4) times. They yearn for the love they deserve but which they never really get.

It’s okay if you never played Kabaddi in your lifetime, deeming it as a game of streets not suitable for gentlemen.

It’s alright if you don’t know the names of the players who keep bringing the cup home. But because we are gentlemen, we can at least clap for the amazing feat our Kabaddi players keep achieving.

So, feel proud and puff your chest up because in this grim time when we don’t really have much to be proud of, Kabaddi is a genuine reason to feel good about being Indian.