Have you ever wanted to play tag with your friends, but they wanted to wrestle instead? No? Me either, but evidently the Indians did. Kabaddi is actually a mixture between the ancient Greek spectacle of wrestling and the childhood game of tag. And to top it off, there’s normally someone not breathing at any given time.
Sounds crazy right? But I’ll get to the rules in a second. First, let’s talk about the crazed origins of the game. Apparantly, the game originates in pre-historic India. However, the modern gae arose around 1930. Not so long after, there was a regulated league for the sport, called the All India Kabaddi Federation. The AFKI went on to tour most of eastern Asia and eventually came to be called the Asian Kabaddi Federation in 1978. Now, an international league tours through most of Asia, and becomes more popular every year.
So now back to the basics. How exactly do you play wrestle-tag? There’s two teams of 12 (7 per team with 5 substitutions) playing on a ‘court’ about half the size of an NBA basketball court. The game is played in two halves of 20 minutes, in which each team is a ‘raider’ in one half. One raider crosses the half-way mark into opponent territory. As soon as he crosses the middle line, he is not allowed to breather; to make sure of it, he is forced to repeatedly chant ‘Kabaddi’. The raider then has 30 seconds to successfully tag one of the defenders and get back across the center line to his side, all-the-while chanting Kabaddi. The catch is that once the raider tags, the tagged defender can chase him down and wrestle him to the ground until the 30 seconds is up or until the raider is forced to breathe, whichever comes first. If the raider gets back to the line, the raiders score a point and the tagged player is out. If not, the raider is out and the defenders score a point. There’s also some complex rule about bonus points, but you could read more into that if you want to at the link below. At any point if a payer steps out of bounds, they are out and the opposing team scores a point.
So, although this sport isn’t necessarily as tough as Botaoshi, it’s definitely more popular and more organized.Who knows, maybe in a few years America will decide to become involved in the man-child sport.
Not sure where you keep finding these “sports”, but boy are they insane! I think we need to bring some of these games to Penn State, as we already have so many club sports why not start a few more. As you said, this one definitely seems more organized, and likely safe, than bataoshi, but sometimes all the fun is in the hectic danger of the game (or wait, maybe not). Either way, this one looks like something that would be fun to play with your friends over the summer (or in the snow???). It requires limited supplies so it would be great to play if a bunch of guys are just hanging around looking to play tag while others want to wrestle. By the way, that has never happened to me either.
Gonna be honest, this game seems really fun to me! I would definitely play it if we had something like that in the US. I’ve always been interested in wrestling, but just never got into it in high school, so to combine it with a team, on-field sport seems like it would be right up my alley. Furthermore, the game seems like a much safer sport than football while still retaining that physical aspect which I love. Who knows, maybe we’ll see this sport make a transition to the US at some point (But probably not).