How Emerging teams are helping Kabaddi to Grow

Kabaddi has been one of the oldest sports in India. Right from ancient times, the sport has been a popular one in the country. Despite being around for centuries, Kabaddi, however, is not popular in several parts of the world. This is one of the reasons for India's domination in the game. That being said, the game has been growing ever since the World Cup began. There are have been better coverage for the game, but several nations have picked up the sport mainly because of the coverage. With the Pro Kabaddi League coming in, the viewership only got better. The coverage has helped the game reach the nook and corner of the game.

Today, investment in the sport has increased so much that several players are choosing the game as their career. Earlier, Kabaddi used to be just a part-time game while everyone had a full job. Time has been changing, and the growth has inspired several emerging countries to take up the sport as well. All these are major reasons why the Kabaddi is going global today.

Emerging nations like South Korea have improved a lot over the years and have become a threat to top nations like India. In fact, the rise of kabaddi in Iran is itself an inspiring story altogether.

In Iran, the sport was never played as a competition in the country before the federation was formed in 1996. Fazel Atrachali, who is a household name in Pro Kabaddi League, also used to be a wrestler. The growth in the sport helped them to become the first time to stop India from winning the gold medal in the last Asian Games.

Before the last edition of the Asian Games, India dominated right from the first game in 1990 until 2018. They had won every single match right from the start. In 2018, South Korea, another recently developed country, defeated India for the first time in the Asian Games.

Though the Indian team made it to the semi-final, Iran hit the final nail in the coffin for the Indian team to knock them out of the Games for the first time ever. This recent development certainly made the Games more interesting. All these years, with India dominating the tournament, the matches were pretty one-sided and were difficult to watch, but with Iran and other nations growing into superpowers, it has made the game more competitive and interesting to watch.

The same goes for the Iran women's Kabaddi team as well. The sport wasn't very famous years ago and the players did not even know how to tackle or grab. They just followed gentle touch to eliminate the opponent. The game was not competitive at all. Only the Indian women played competitive games and they proved to be superior compared to their opponent but in 2018, Iran made a name for themselves by becoming the first team to defeat India in the final.

While there are several emerging teams and players who had made heads turn over the years, the run and growth of Iran in the sport is a story to talk about forever. In Iran, India has a team to fight against and the rivalry has brought in more viewers to the sport. The viewers are important because more the views, more will be the investment. Since 2018, there have been several programs that have helped in the development of the Kabaddi across countries.

Therefore, the upcoming Asian Games will be more competitive than in other years. The upcoming edition of the Asian Games will begin in September and India will look to regain the gold medal from Iran. The defending champions, on the other hand, would be raring to create an upset once again over the Indian Kabaddi team.