Hello Sports Lovers,
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I am sure some of you you already heard about sports Kabaddi and if you are from India sub continent or some of the other Asian countries, you will definitely know about this sports.
Let me give a brief introduction about Kabaddi before I proceed with Pro Kabaddi, the Professional Kabaddi League which happens every year in India.
Kabaddi is an indigenous contact sports which was started in the rural areas in India and the sports requires 7 players each side playing on the mat with 3 to 5 reserve players making it a 12 to 15 member team sports.
I better get this description from wikipedia for better conveying of what Kabaddi is and how it's played.
Played between two teams of seven players, the objective of the game is for a single player on offence, referred to as a "raider", to run into the opposing team's half of a court, tag out as many of their defenders as possible, and return to their own half of the court, all without being tackled by the defenders, and in a single breath. Points are scored for each player tagged by the raider, while the opposing team earns a point for stopping the raider. Players are taken out of the game if they are tagged or tackled, but are brought back in for each point scored by their team from a tag or tackle.
Kabaddi is being popularized in even African, American and European countries as well as there is International Kabaddi Federation with as many as 32 member countries and 9 non members countries and all these have their national teams.
Kabaddi is more famous in India with all the Indian states having teams which takes parts in national games and since 2014, there is a professional version of Kabaddi league being played in India by the name Pro Kabaddi which comprises of talented Indian and International Kabaddi players.
Kabaddi is part of the Asian Games since 1990 and India is the highest gold medal winner with 7 in men's category and 2 in women's and only Iran could challenge them for gold medals with 2 gold medals in the last edition held at Jakarta, Indonesia with both men's and women's team securing gold for Iran.
Pro Kabaddi:
Pro Kabaddi was started as a 8 team league in 2014 with an aim of popularizing the game even more in India and other countries and the response received was overwhelming with players and by the Fifth edition in 2017, the total teams got increased to 12 and the same format and number of teams being continued till now.
Pro Kabaddi teams are as below:
Dabang Delhi KC
Bengal Warriors
UP Yoddha
Haryana Steelers
U Mumba
Bengaluru Bulls
Jaipur Pink Panthers
Patna Pirates
Puneri Paltan
Gujarat Fortunegiants
Telugu Titans
Tamil Thalaivas
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Pro Kabaddi 2021 players auction:
Recently, the auction for the players for this year's Pro Kabaddi took place and there were some record bidding for some of the start players with Dubki King* Pardeep Narwal getting sold for whooping INR 1.65 Crore which is approximately equal to US$ 226K and that is the highest bidding any player has got so far.
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Pardeep Narwal
Pardeep Narwal started with Bengaluru Bulls in 2014 and in 2016, he moved to Patna Pirates and ever since, he is the raider wit highest points as he scored over 1K raid points in total.
In this year's auction, he was picked up by UP Yoddha for that record amount and UP team will be hoping to win it's First title with Pardeep in their team.
The Second highest bid player in this year's auction was, last year's highest bid earner Siddharth Desai who started with U Mumba and now plays for Telugu Titans since last edition.
Siddharth was retained by Telugu Titans after releasing him and with Final Bid Match, Telugu Titans got him back into their team for this season too.
Apart from Indian players, there are players from Iran, Korea, Bangladesh and Kenya with some of the popular names being Fazel Atrachali, Hadi Tajik, Meraj Sheykh and others.
Pro Kabaddi is Second most watched sport in India after Indian Premier League cricket tournament and after missing last year's edition due to pandemic, Indians and Kabaddi lovers all around the World will be looking forward to this edition which will be played in December this year with dates yet to be announced.
Thanks for going thru my blogs and supporting as you guys always do.
Have a great Friday :)