Look, until right now, I’d never heard of kabaddi. But, after watching a few YouTube videos, it’s already my favourite sport – which is often labelled one of the world’s craziest, strangest, and most ancient. Just in time too as the Kabaddi World Cup (KWC) is set to come to the West Midlands in 2025 – including games in Birmingham.
What is kabaddi?
Put simply, kabaddi is a contact sport between two seven-sided teams. Teams are split into “raiders” and “blockers”. Your team scores points when the raider runs into the opposition’s territory, touches as many of the opponent’s players as possible, and returns to their own half without being tackled by a “blocker” in 30 seconds.
Points are scored for each player tagged, while the opposing team earns a point for stopping them. If players are touched or tackled, they are out of the game until their team scores another point. As you can imagine, kabaddi is a rough game that involves a lot of pushing, pulling, diving, and (oddly) handholding – what’s not to love?
What is the history of the sport?
Take all this with a pinch of salt, but some believe that variations of the sport can be traced back to ancient India (roughly 3,000 years ago). Some even say that the religious figures Gautama Buddha and Lord Krishna used to play, but this sounds too farfetched for me to confirm (and too outside of my knowledge to deny).
What we can say about kabaddi is that is been a huge competitive sport on the Indian subcontinent since the 1920s, when the first organized competitions started happening and standardised many variations of the game. The creation of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) in 2014 only further revolutionised the sport.
Kabaddi is currently the second most popular sport in India, after cricket, and is the national sport of Bangladesh. Brought over by its South Asian diaspora, it’s also found a smaller, but no less passionate following in the UK. It also found a fanbase in the 1990s when it was broadcast on Channel 4…
When is the Kabaddi World Cup in Birmingham?
The Kabaddi World Cup will take place between March 17 and 23, across the West Midlands, with Nechells Wellbeing Centre in Birmingham one of four venue hosts for the KWC. The other venues are Convetry’s Centre AT7, WV Active Aldersley in Wolverhampton and Walsall Campus Sports Centre.
Over 60 matches will see men’s and women’s teams from 16 countries across 5 continents compete at the tournament. The men’s competition sees England drawn against Malaysia, Poland and Cameroon; the women’s competition sees England drawn against Hong Kong, Poland and Tanzania.
Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but you can register your interest in the tournament by heading here.