Women’s Kabaddi is 'Next Step' for Pro Kabaddi League

By Shamya Dasgupta, Wisden India
The Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) has been something of a success and that must have been a relief for the organisers, investors and promoters. It was, after all, a risky proposition.

The games have largely been engrossing, the standards high. Now, as anyone who has seen women play kabaddi at the highest level will testify, that is an equally exciting, exacting game. Why not a women’s chapter in the PKL then? Charu Sharma, the director of Mashal Sports, the guys who have put the show together, admits to going slow in the tournament’s first edition, keeping in mind the fact that kabaddi was untested as far as the TV-viewing audience was concerned. "But that is the next step," he confirms.

Kabaddi is an Indian sport. And though it has taken off in quite a few other countries – especially in the Asian region – it remains one of few sports where India are the undisputed champions of the world. The men’s team have won all the World Cups to have taken place till date – 2004, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2013, and their women counterparts have been equally dominant, winning both the 2012 and 2013 World Cups as well as and 2010 Asian Games competition.

The women’s game, somewhat slower than the men’s, is no less makes it, one hopes, as palatable to prime-time audiences as the men’s game seems to have become. Radha Kapoor agrees. The young entrepreneur is the owner of the Dabang Delhi team in the PKL and seems fairly certain that there’s space for women in the mix too.

"I think it will be great. We have a lot of women kabaddi players, they play aggressively, and from what I have seen, it’s very exciting," she says. "The idea is to go out there and give them a platform. Our women sportspersons have been doing brilliantly with Saina (Nehwal) and Mary Kom and the squash g i rl s Dipika (Pallikal) and Joshna (Chinappa). So if we can get them coaches, mentor them, even widen the net and attract more youngsters, create awareness, then it can only help." The plan, of course, is driven by business. "I always wanted to invest in sports," says Kapoor, adding that she had forgotten about kabaddi after playing it in school.

"Also, the idea of promoting an underdog sport was always exciting. If we create the right brand ethos and bring it to the forefront, uplift it and give it a professional platform – that’s the plan."

Both Sharma and Kapoor claim to be "talking about a women’s league" though neither of them wants to give out too much just yet. One can see why.

Corporates that agree to spend money for men’s sport tend to be wary of investing in women. As such, the performance of Indian women at the international stage should dispel such thoughts, but when have statistics helped change mental blocks?

There is a common suggestion that women’s sport, say kabaddi, needs to be glammed up to be sold. No one wants to talk about it, but, FIFA boss Sepp Blatter’s statement in the context of women’s football comes to mind immediately: "Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball; they could, for example, have tighter shorts."

But "from the looks of it, there is an audience," stresses Kapoor, and one hopes that’s true.

People who have never cared for kabaddi have found it in themselves to watch at least little bits of the PKL, and the small sample of people this writer has posed the question to have all agreed that it’s topped their expectations. Perhaps, as is being hinted, PKL will test the waters with women’s kabaddi next year and, around this time come 2015, we’ll be saying it topped our expectations.