Pro Kabaddi:The improbable league that captured hearts

As Season 10 of the Pro Kabaddi League is about to begin, Mint looks back at the league's phenomenal popularity

- Deepti Patwarchan

Before Pro Kabaddi hit the television screens in 2014, Kailash Kandpal, CEO of Insurekot Sports, which owns one of the founding teams, Puneri Paltan, recalls the endeavour being regarded with a level of ridicule.

The early 2010s was indeed the golden period for sporting leagues in India. The Indian Premier League (IPL), launched in 2008, had unpacked a host of possibilities for other sports and new leagues in hockey, tennis, wrestling-even futsal had cropped up.

"Back in 2014, when I used to tell people we have a kabaddi team, people used to wonder," Kandpal tells Mint. Insurekot Sports was just dipping its feet into the world of sports, and the Pune kabaddi franchise was their first venture. "They would say anything happens in India; any league comes up. But the opening which it got, from the fans in the stands, back home people watching it on TV, that set the tone." On July 26, 2014, curtains were raised on the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), in front of packed crowds in Mumbai. Rishank Devadiga, a Mumbai boy, playing for the city franchise U Mumba, remembers the wall of noise that met him as he entered the darkened NSCI Dome, lit up by sweeping spotlights.

"My school friends, locality friends, everyone had come to watch the match. I could hear those screams from my friends," he says. "It was something new for us. On the first day, we were told there will be a lot of crowd; celebrities will be coming to watch the match. All the kabaddi players were pumped up. The game was already very popular in the rural areas. Wherever we used to go to play local matches or departmental matches, hundreds and thousands used to come and watch it. Kabaddi just needed that opportunity to be on the big screen, that's what PKL provided." Pro Kabaddi yanked India's rural sport into the 21st century, from mud to mat; from the sidelines into the spotlight.