Active Stocks
Thu Mar 28 2024 15:59:33
  1. Tata Steel share price
  2. 155.90 2.00%
  1. ICICI Bank share price
  2. 1,095.75 1.08%
  1. HDFC Bank share price
  2. 1,448.20 0.52%
  1. ITC share price
  2. 428.55 0.13%
  1. Power Grid Corporation Of India share price
  2. 277.05 2.21%
Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Waiting to exhale
BackBack

Waiting to exhale

Will the Pro Kabaddi league help this indigenous, full-contact sport find more takers?

Telugu Titans (in yellow) play Dabang Delhi at New Delhi’s Thyagraj Stadium on 3 August. Photographs by Pradeep Gaur/ MintPremium
Telugu Titans (in yellow) play Dabang Delhi at New Delhi’s Thyagraj Stadium on 3 August. Photographs by Pradeep Gaur/ Mint

NEW DELHI :

Amit Singh’s family, including 20-odd neighbours from Nizampur village on the north-western edge of New Delhi, and a bus-load of uncles, nephews and nieces, makes so much noise that they embarrass the 23-year-old raider with spiked hair. It’s not easy to do that, given the swagger with which Singh, one of the youngest members of the Dabang Delhi team in the Pro Kabaddi league, conducts himself.

But this is not a situation Singh is familiar with—bright lights, a stadium echoing incoherently with music, noise and fever-pitched commentators, television cameras swooping in on overhead cranes, and then, distinctly, his brother’s voice going: “Chhodna mat, puri team ko le le (Don’t let them go, take the whole team)."

Pro Kabaddi has rolled into town. On 3 August, the league’s first day in the Capital, Delhi played the Telugu Titans at the Thyagraj Stadium; it was a little more than half-full, though the noise level was overflowing. Singh, who is short and lithe, made audacious raids, using his athleticism to the full to leap, twist, stretch and sprint away from the Telugu defenders.

The league is the latest in a series of franchise-based, city-hopping tournaments that have been cropping up in an effort to capture India’s rising interest in games other than cricket. There is a major difference though. So far, all the franchise leagues have tried to bank on popular international Olympic sports like badminton, boxing or hockey. This one is taking a centuries-old indigenous sport, embedded in rural India, to the city, and into the drawing room.

Into its second week now, the Pro Kabaddi league, being played across six cities, is being promoted aggressively and broadcast by the Star network, with its matches live on prime-time evening slots. Team owners include Kotak Mahindra Bank’s managing director Uday Kotak (the Pune franchise), Future Group chief Kishore Biyani (Kolkata), Radha Kapoor, daughter of YES Bank chief executive Rana Kapoor (Delhi), and actor Abhishek Bachchan (Jaipur). Perhaps former sports commentator Charu Sharma, whose Mashal Sports conceptualized the league and is promoting it, is really on to something.

View Full Image
The spectators.

Nizampur residents will be happy. The village has produced plenty of kabaddi players for the Indian team in the past few decades. They have been a proud part of India’s undefeated international record of the sport, going back to 1990, when kabaddi was first introduced at the Asian Games. While medallists in almost all other sports have found themselves in the limelight, kabaddi has somehow slipped through the cracks.

“Yes, it’s strange," says Rakesh Kumar, who captained India to their 2006and 2010 Asian Games golds. “We are only in the news for 5 minutes when we win a gold at the Asian Games, then there’s nothing before or after. It’s a rural game, so the media doesn’t care. We are never on TV. Maybe this will change things," he says. Kumar is from Nizampur as well, and is the most expensive signing, at 12.8 lakh, of the Pro Kabaddi league. He captains the Patna team.

Now he is on TV all the time.

The league is also a chance for the sport’s international players, who come from the handful of Asian countries that play the sport, to show their stuff in kabaddi’s home.

Takamitsu Kono hasn’t got too many chances to actually play for the Delhi team, but he is happy just to soak in the atmosphere, and learn as much as he can from the best players of the sport before the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, in September. Kono, 21, is a Buddhist scholar at Taisho University in Tokyo, and part of the Japanese national team.

In school, he was a rugby player. When he entered college to study Buddhism, he was introduced to kabaddi by the monks. It is Buddhist monks who are credited with bringing the sport to Japan around 20 years back.

“We have around 20 kabaddi clubs in Tokyo," says Kono. “It’s fun. Like a bit of wrestling, a bit of martial arts, and something of rugby in one game."

You can’t fault kabaddi as a spectator sport. It has a lot of brawny men using both brute power and strategic teamwork in a fast-paced, easy-to-understand game. You’ve got slippery escapades and bone-crunching tackles. You’ve got sneaky attacks and quickly executed defensive traps.

Saryu, a 28-year-old lawyer from Karnataka who moved to New Delhi a month ago, cheered loudly from the stands during the Delhi-Telugu match. She had come with four friends, equally divided in their support.

“Kabbadi was the one game we played growing up," Saryu says. “I am not into cricket and other sports but I enjoy kabbadi because I understand the rules and can figure out what is going wrong, who is playing well and who is not. If you are watching a sport, be involved totally. That’s why kabbadi is special for me because I can do that here. The Pro Kabbadi league is a good idea but I wish they had set up a women’s league simultaneously."

Kiran Hegde, who is working with a multinational company, had come with his wife; they thought it would be a fun way to spend a Sunday evening. Hegde has been following the league on TV too.

Neelam Sahu, the women’s kabbadi team coach at the Palam Sports Club in Dwarka, was at the stadium with her team. “Of course people in Delhi will love the game—it is fast, needs strength," she says. “I have been teaching the game for 17 years now and there is no lack of interest when the girls play. They are equally appreciated. They should have started the girls league side by side. It is so much harder for girls to play the sport and find a way to make a living from it."

Sharma says that a women’s league is in the pipeline.

“Women’s kabaddi is played with fervour and enthusiasm and followed as keenly," he says. “But it’s a big thing to mount in India. We are struggling right now with the prejudices. It has taken me three years to get to this point."

Sharma is modest about the financial expectations from the league. Teams will not break even in the first year. He is banking on the philosophy that owning a sports franchise is more than just business—“it’s a very respected, special privilege," he says. “It’s something to enjoy and share." It also helps companies and brands reach places they haven’t before. “This is a mass sport and plenty of mass consumer brands and products are looking for mass-base properties," Sharma says. “Everyone wants to head to tier 2, tier 3 towns; profits are coming from there."

The league though will stay firmly in the big cities, hoping for a ripple effect to take it to smaller towns and rural areas.

But that a kabaddi league is possible at all is perhaps a sign of the reverse effect: the rapid urbanization of small towns and villages.

Delhi captain Jasmer Singh, also a member of the 2006 and 2010 Asian Games gold-winning side, comes from Bursham village in Panipat, Haryana. When Jasmer, 31, started playing kabaddi, he was 10, and his village was a sleepy farming community. In between harvest seasons, all the men in the village would play kabaddi and wrestling, on earthen surfaces made soft and even for the purpose.

“Now my village is almost a part of Delhi," Jasmer says. “We have now almost completed building an indoor stadium in the village for kabaddi and wrestling. It will have mats, lights, a gym, everything. It feels good that our sport is getting some attention, some money."

Seema Chowdhry contributed to this story.

Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More Less
Published: 06 Aug 2014, 08:29 PM IST
Next Story footLogo
Recommended For You
Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App