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 points are awarded to both teams. A team scores two bonus points(lunaa) if the entire opposite team is declared out. The team with most points at the end of the match is the winners. A single Kabaddi match is supervised by six officials: A Referee, two umpires, a scorer and two assistant scorers.
