How Pro Kabaddi made kabaddi the most-watched sport in India after cricket
The Hindu
Pro Kabaddi made a hinterland sport the cynosure of primetime television
A crowd of about 100 people restlessly wait in front of Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium in Bengaluru. It is a Wednesday evening, and they are in line to watch a Pro Kabbadi double header — Gujarat Giants versus UP Yoddhas and Bengaluru Bulls versus Tamil Thalaivas.
An announcement from a loudspeaker instructs people to display the ticket on their email or the ticket-booking app and not a screenshot. Some begin to scour through their phones. A family of four – a middle-aged couple, an elderly woman, and a kid – clad in red-and-black Bengaluru Bulls jerseys await their turn to enter the gate. Pro Kabaddi has been their dinner routine for the last three years.
“We don’t even watch cricket as much as we watch kabaddi,” says Sharadha D, a bank employee. “Yeah, there is just too much cricket these days,” the father, Krishnaraja, chimes in (The auditorium, however, would later scream, rather absurdly, the name of the local IPL team — “RCB, RCB” — whenever Bengaluru Bulls score a point). As the kid starts talking about his interest in Pro Kabaddi, team buses enter the premises, one after another. He frantically waves his hands at the bus windows, yelling the names of his favourite players, hoping to get a wave in return. One of the names is Chandran Ranjit, the captain of Gujarat Giants.
Chandran is from Alathankarai, a hamlet in Kanyakumari and one of the many scattered kabaddi hubs in Tamil Nadu. The Alathankarai Kabaddi Club, founded in 1989, has produced several national and international players. Chandran has been playing kabaddi since he was 15. His coach initially told him he was too thin to play the sport; he suggested volleyball instead. But whenever the coach wasn’t looking, Chandran joined a kabaddi game. “I just wanted to play the sport,” he says. “I never thought if it would help me get employed; if it would help me to support my family; if it would get me somewhere in life.” But it did — he built a house for his parents; married off his sister; and from being relatively unknown in Alathankarai, he now has fans in Bengaluru yelling his name.
Pro Kabaddi, started in 2014 (as Pro Kabaddi League), changed Chandran’s life — and the sport itself.
Glamourising the game
Despite being so good at it, India did not have a big following for kabaddi. It was considered a rural sport. The buzz for the sport came only once in four years when the men’s team (and later the women’s team) won the gold medal at the Asian Games.
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