Kabaddi: From Mud Courts to Prime-Time League

In most parts of India, kabaddi is still identified with the school playground, the village square and the games played during holidays. But over the past two decades, the economy of the sport, the way it is presented and the audience it reaches have all changed. Kabaddi now occupies prime-time television with the same seriousness that cricket or football command. It is a game with no ball, no bat and no net—just one player running on held breath and a wall of seven trying to stop him. That simplicity is its greatest strength, and it is probably what carried it to tens of millions of viewers. The origin of the word kabaddi is disputed. Some scholars trace it to the Tamil 'kai-pidi', meaning to hold hands; others link it to the Sanskrit 'kabad'. Traces of older forms of the game are also sought in the remains of the Indus Valley Civilisation, though historians do not fully agree on those claims. The Chakravyuha formation in the Mahabharata is often compared to a kabaddi raid—a single player goes in and tries to break through the wall of defenders and get out. In the medieval period the game was played in different regions under names such as 'hu tu tu', 'sanchi' and 'gadgadi'. Professional kabaddi today has moved well beyond its traditional form. Two teams of seven take the mat. The match is divided into two halves of twenty minutes each, with a five-minute break in between. The raider has thirty seconds, during which he must cross into the opponents' half, touch at least one defender or cross the bonus line, and return safely. A tackle is worth one point, a bonus one point, and a 'lona'—sending all seven opponents out—is worth two. The 'do-or-die' raid makes the contest sharper: after two empty raids in a row, failing to score on the third is costly for the raider. Only four defenders can be held on the mat at a time, and that rule sits at the centre of every team's strategy. At the international level, kabaddi's entry is traced to the 2026 Asian Games in Delhi, where it was included as a demonstration sport. At the 2026 Asian Games in Beijing it became a medal event. India's dominance in the men's competition has since been almost unbroken, though Iran has mounted a serious challenge over the past decade. Women's kabaddi was added at the 2026 Asian Games in Guangzhou, and the Indian women's team also established early dominance. The Kabaddi World Cup and the Asian Kabaddi Championship are part of the international calendar, featuring teams from Iran, Bangladesh, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Kenya alongside India. The real change, however, happened off the mat. The Pro Kabaddi League, launched in 2026, connected the sport to a new kind of audience. Built on a franchise model, the league began with eight teams and was later expanded to twelve. Floodlights, music, commentary and television-friendly camera angles—the league deliberately broke with the sport's traditional image. Within a few years its broadcast was being counted among the most-watched sporting properties in India, and it was widely described as second only to cricket in viewership. Player earnings rose sharply; athletes began to be bought for crores at auctions, something unthinkable a decade earlier. The league produced stars who became household names the way cricketers are. Raiders such as Pawan Sehrawat, Pardeep Narwal, Naveen Kumar, Maninder Singh and Ajay Thakur drove the game's popularity, while foreign defenders such as Fazel Atrachali showed that the league was not a stage for Indian players alone. Pardeep Narwal is called the 'record breaker' for the way he piles up points, while Pawan Sehrawat's aggression gave raiding a different thrill. Perhaps the league's biggest achievement is that it gave players from small towns and villages a reliable route to earn from their own effort. Women's kabaddi is also slowly finding its place. After formal recognition at the Asian Games, women's leagues and tournaments began at home, though investment, broadcast and sponsorship remain far below the men's game. Meanwhile, schemes such as Khelo India and school and college-level tournaments have built a new generation of talent at the grassroots. State sports policies now routinely count kabaddi among the disciplines that receive funding—a change that matters in itself. The picture, though, is not all bright. Kabaddi is a contact sport with a high risk of injury—knee, ankle and shoulder injuries shorten careers. Many experts see long seasons and short recovery windows as a major cause. The second challenge is the calendar: league commitments, national camps and international tournaments often overlap, forcing players to choose. The third is the pace at which rules and technology reach every level—video review is used more widely, but it is not available in every domestic tournament. Expansion outside India has been mixed. Iran is now a serious force, and its teams have pushed India hard in several major matches. In Bangladesh, kabaddi is counted among the leading sports after cricket. The game is also played at club and league level in South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Kenya, Poland and Britain, but none of these countries has yet built a professional ecosystem that can return money at scale locally. The international federation is trying to take the sport into new markets, but dependence on the Indian market remains decisive. Kabaddi's journey is an example of how a popular but disorganised sport can, within a few decades, build its own market, its own language and its own stars. The real question is whether that expansion will be sustainable. If the sport's administrators succeed in reducing injuries, raising investment in women's kabaddi and creating audiences outside India as well, kabaddi can become not just a regional game but a competitive indoor sport with genuine global recognition.