An ancient Indian sport that looks like a mixture of tag, dodgeball and wrestling has barreled back into the Indian national consciousness to become one of the country’s most popular sports, trailing only cricket. Once a favourite kids’ game that was largely forgotten in adulthood, kabaddi has had a surge of serious money and Bollywood glamour since the launch of the Pro-Kabaddi League in July. Since the league’s launch, 396 million viewers have watched the live televised matches according to TAM Media Research, which monitors viewing figures nationally – more than double the number of Indians who watched this year’s Fifa World Cup. In the space of a month, kabaddi became India’s second most-watched sport, leap-frogging field hockey to trail only the obsessively-followed Indian Premier League in cricket.
There was a fair amount of prejudice, where a lot of people thought, ‘Yes, it’s our game but it’s probably more of a rural game than anything else’.
Ronnie Screwvala, a kabaddi commentator who founded the league
The 12 teams touring five cities across India attracted sell-out crowds, and 22 million tuned in to the semifinals. On paper, kabaddi would seem a peculiar game to be played professionally. Essentially, it resembles Red Rover: Two teams of seven score points through ”raids,” where a player darts into the opponents’ half and tries to cross a line on the far side of the court. The opposing team’s job is to stop him. Defenders can tackle the raider anytime he’s moving, resulting in spectacular jumping dodges as the attacking player tries to fly over the typically wrestler-sized opponents looking to slam him to the ground. The game’s most unusual feature also lends the sport its name: Whenever attacking, a player must chant the word ”kabaddi” repeatedly without drawing breath. If he stops before returning to his own half, he forfeits any points gained in the attack.