The Patna Pirates may have walked away with the honors on Saturday after five weeks of relentless kabaddi in Star Sports' Pro Kabaddi League. But it was the game of kabaddi that really was the winner at end of every single game and every single day. As the league moved from city to city, state to state and touched culture after culture, it accumulated tons of love and won million hearts.
A sport so associated with rural India found place in hot discussions in big cities, trended on social media and got the generation next admiring the age old sport of the soil with the same vigor as any other world renowned sport.
A quick action-packed high-entertaining game is certainly what the audience crave for today and kabaddi does tick that box. But there is something more refreshing than sheer entertainment that Kabaddi has brought to the table, which has made the masses form a bond with the game.
For all its recent ventures in top city schools and complexes, where small kids are seen playing Kabaddi, the sport retains a strong rural flavor to it. The game, the players and all the action on the mat reflects the innocence, honesty and even the ruggedness of the people living in the villages of this vast country.
Take a look at all the big sports around the world and you can't hide from the fact that the true spirit and true essence of the sport has to take a back seat to a bit too much of professionalism and in some cases fickleness. The Pro Kabaddi League has managed to instill professionalism in the sport that was otherwise missing, but the true spirit and the essence in which kabaddi would be played on the mud courts in villages can still be felt on the courts of this fashionable competition.
The level of honesty among the kabaddi players is amazing. Never will you see a kabaddi player denying a touch, or faking one in case of the raiders, barring certain cases of absolute confusion and uncertainty. It's great to be an umpire in Kabaddi as the players themselves are great regulators and make the life of an umpire so very easy.
For such an intense contact sport, rarely would you see a player losing cool in even the most critical of situations. The kabaddi players too have egos, probably big fat ones and surely being hassled down to the mat so ruthlessly does it no conditioning. So what makes these players overcome their egos and maintain such a high level of honesty in their behavior and the game?
"When a raider comes to raid he is alone. He has to take a touch and escape from seven opponent players and if he manages to do so, it is a very big achievement. So as a fellow sportsman and a fellow kabaddi player, it is my duty to respect that and put my hand up if the raider has touched me. That's my way of appreciating his good piece of play," expressed Nilesh Shinde, the captain of the Bengal Warriors, who has been playing the sport for over sixteen years.
Such level of honesty and mutual respect among players is heart-warming. It is rare that a player has such a high level of dedication to not just play the sport well but also to play it in the right spirit. "Honesty is a part of the dedication. If there is no honesty in sport, then it perhaps isn't a sport anymore. If we lie on the pitch, it stays in our mind and the conscience pricks us, so lying or cheating in the game is not at all worth it," Puneri Paltan's veteran defender Jasmer Singh Gulia had, to opine.
"In Kabaddi, we live as a family. All of us treat each other as brothers and in brotherhood, there is no place for lie or treachery. Honesty is a part of the sport's sentiment and we know that there is no one in the game who would lie," said U Mumba skipper Anup as he tried to reason why kabaddi players are so honest on the court.
Honesty and sportsmanship exist at the root of any sport, but are often sidelined as the sport gains popularity and financial success. Sportsmanship takes a hit when the stakes become high. Kabaddi has certainly reached that stage where the stakes are only going to get higher. So will the sport be able to retain the exact sentiments that has helped it touch so many souls across the country? Only time will tell.
But for stalwarts and newcomers in the game of kabaddi alike, there seems to be no threat whatsoever to the sportsmanship in the game. "How can there be any threat to honesty? When people see us playing the game in the right spirit they know that we are honest people. That's something no kabaddi player wants to change and hence I feel honesty in the game will grow with it," stated Jasmer Singh Gulia.
"I have been playing Kabaddi for 6-7 years and have played every season of Pro Kabaddi League. Never has the thought of lying crossed my mind at any point and I am sure it’s the same with every other player involved in the league," suggested Ajay Thakur, a relatively newer player to the game compared to the likes of Anup Kumar, Jasmer Gulia and Nilesh Shinde.
The game of kabaddi that is quickly gaining admirers not just in every stretch of India but across the globe, isn't happening at a cost. Sportsmanship is an integral part of the fabric of the game, so enshrined in the minds of its practitioners, that are gentlemen in the truest sense of the word. And in this gentleman's game, honesty is certainly the only policy.
