The new Lords of the Ring

From milk-and-ghee diets to protein shakes, from hostel rooms to five-star hotels, India's top kabaddi players are moving into a different league -one that promises big money, fame and glamour — Ace kabaddi player Jasmer Singh is glad he does not have to take his shirt off.
This stadium is not mud floored like the one back home. And it would have been awkward — there is a woman in a grey skirt chirping away at its centre.
This circular hall in Worli must be four times the size of the humble indoor kabaddi stadium that his village Bursham in Haryana is building for the game that it loves. With airconditioning, pink mats, disco lights, fireworks and thumping music, it seems more ready to welcome WWE wrestlers than 14 rough and ready athletes. But the glitzy ambience of the just launched Pro Kabaddi League, says Singh, will help players like him.
“I probably wouldn’t have to introduce myself after this,” says the 31-year-old Asian Games gold medalist.
The IPL-isation of their humble, homespun game has meant that these faceless athletes suddenly find themselves sweating aesthetically in promotional TV campaigns. It is, for many players, their first stay at a fivestar hotel, their first flight and their first encounter with cash before a game. “I have never seen money before a game earlier,” says Singh, who was purchased by the Delhi franchise at Rs 11.2 lakh.
In fact, none of the six players to have fetched over Rs 10 lakh could believe they were worth what’s the rough cost of a top-end sedan. Arjuna awardee Rakesh Kumar, who bagged
the highest bid at Rs 12.8 lakh, had been resting after a training session when the auction took place. “When my friend woke me up and told me the amount, I told him not to mess with me and almost went back to sleep,” says the 32-year-old, who hails from Nizampur near Delhi, his Hindi laced with a Punjabi accent.
In the next few days, as captain of the national team and the number one player in the world, Kumar went through a lot of rehearsal runs with
his team and mock interviews. He even posed sideways for profile pictures with team members, just like the international football superstars. “There wasn't this much `shooting' earlier,“ says Kumar, who works as a ticket collector, adding that colleagues and relatives are filling their Facebook pages with wishes and requests for match passes.
Even their diet has changed from homely to trendy. There was a time when Himachal's 6“1' tall Ajay Thakur, also known as the Virat Kohli of Kabaddi, used to drink a glass of milk, fortified with crushed almonds and a few drops of desi ghee -standard pre scription for strength-building se days, I have juice, pro in India. “These days, I have juice, protein shakes and at least three to four litres of milk a day,“ says Thakur, one of India's best raiders, who, at Rs 12.2 lakh, costs less than Kohli's car even but is just as valuable to the nation as the stylish middle-order batsman.
“We now travel in air-conditioned cars, which feels good,“ says Navneet Gautam, an Arjuna awardee from Jaipur who was thrilled to learn that he will be playing for Jaipur's Pink Panthers, owned by actor Abhishek Bachchan. The franchise paid Rs 11.2 lakh for Gautam, a defender who has helped the national team win two Kabaddi World Cups. The plush comforts of five-star hotels have been a pleasant leap from the hostels they are used to. Not that the hostels were bad. “But they were average,” points out Jeeva Kumar, a State Bank of Mysore employee.
In time, the players are hoping that television exposure will ensure recognition for all of them. They are looking forward to a time when terms such as ‘baithi’ (toe-touch) or ‘kaichi’ (scissor-hold catch) are known to all.
“We will have our own identity and recognition, even in cities,” says Rakesh Kumar who would be elated if his unique escape maneuver, ‘lion jump’ — he jumps over the opponent’s heads to reach the touch line — becomes a household term, like Dhoni’s helicopter shot. Surely, that would make the severe left shoulder injury he sustained while mastering the move, worth it.
As raiders, these players are used to postponing inhalation to win a point for their team but recognition, they confess, is the ultimate goal of their bated breath. It was, after all, the fuzzy feeling in his chest when people stopped to congratulate him and ask him his name at local tournaments that made Thakur take kabaddi seriously. “It was just a pastime for me till then,” recalls the raider.
At 17, Thakur, whose father was a famous local wrestler known as Himachal Kumar, was spotted by the Sports Authority of India. By 19, he was in the kabaddi national team and at 20, when he played his first match for India at the indoor Asian Games in China, the team won the gold, the only gold India won that year. Besides the huge crowd at the airport, he recalls a more poignant image. “That was the time I saw my father crying,” says the tall Air India employee, whose father now travels to watch his son play much the same way Thakur used to watch his wrestling matches as a kid.
Their game holds enough appeal to go places, feel the players. “It is a mix of many forms — wrestling, for instance,” says Gautam. In fact, international players tend to observe Indian raiders to strategize their tackle differently, says Kumar. That is perhaps why Thakur, hailed as a one-man stampede by the media, has on his phone, videos of another kind of stampede — American boxer Mike Tyson dismantle men for hours. In these videos, Thakur isn’t looking for the stony aggression in Tyson’s eyes or the ruthless might of his iron fists so much. “I look at his feet,” he says.
The most important consequence of the league is confidence. Gautam, who was excited when Bachchan, owner of his franchise, took him along while shoe shopping and even took notes on the game, says he feels motivated. While Thakur feels the event will help draw youngsters to the low-maintenance game that has helped his friends secure classone jobs back home, Rakesh Kumar who hopes to make enough to build his own kabaddi academy, sums up the future of the game with the Modi tagline: “Acche din aane wale hain,” he says.