What is Kabaddi

Kabaddi is one of the oldest sports of Indian origin and has a history of 4000 years. Kabaddi is traditionally an outdoor game played on soft and level ground but nowadays played indoors also. It’s played on clay court outdoors and synthetic courts indoors. Kabaddi is a very popular sport in South-east Asia and is the national sport of Bangladesh. It does not require any expensive equipment to play and it’s known as the ‘Game of the Masses’.  Kabaddi combines the characteristics of both rugby and wrestling. 

Kabaddi has two teams pitched against each other with seven members each.  Each team have five reserve players. The duration of a match is forty minutes for men and thirty minutes for women with a break of five minutes in-between for the teams to change sides.   Kabaddi is a sport where attack is an individual effort but defense is a group effort. Each team sends a player to the opponent’s half in turns known as a ‘Raider’. The raider has to enter the opponent’s half chanting the word Kabaddi while holding his breath and should do so until he returns to his half. The aim of the raider is to tag the opponents and return to his half. The tagged members are declared out.  The defenders try to wrestle the raider and stop him returning to his half before he can take another breath.  If the raider takes a breath before returning to his half, he will be sent off. A player is declared out if he goes over the boundary line or any part of his body touches the ground outside the boundary line

Teams are awarded a point each time an opponent’s player is sent off.  If both the raider and defender are declared out, then no points are awarded to any team. A team scores two bonus points if the entire opposite team is declared out.  The team with most points at the end of the match are the winners. A single Kabaddi match is supervised by six officials: A Referee, two umpires, a scorer and two assistant scorers.

In India, the sport attained National status in 1918. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Kabaddi got its first international exposure. The first Asian Kabaddi Championships was held at Kolkata in the year 1980. Kabaddi was included as demonstration game in the 1982 Asian Games hosted by India. Since 1984, Kabaddi has been played in the South Asian Federation Games which is conducted every two years. Kabaddi was included in the 1990 Asian Games held at Beijing and India went on to win the Gold medal. Since then India has been the reigning champion winning in the succeeding Asian Games held at Hiroshima in 1994, Bangkok in 1998, Busan in 2002 and Doha in 2006. The first World Kabaddi Championship was held at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in the year 1995. Kabaddi was introduced to the African countries as a demonstration sport in the 2002 Afro-Asian Games hosted by India.