For most of the year, the ground behind the Government Senior Secondary School at Doda village in Muktsar district of Punjab is the place where children congregate rather sleepily for their morning assembly. On December 5, however, as the children gather in the morning, the excitement is palpable. They are here to watch a World Cup match. The game may be circle-style kabaddi, a game played in all parts of rural Punjab, but no effort is being spared to give it the trappings of a big-ticket tournament.

On Wednesday, about 15,000 people have thronged the ground, making their way past mustard and ripening cotton fields. Hundreds of security personnel stand guard for miles. Every few hundred yards, there is a billboard depicting Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, his son and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal and other politicians as the promoters behind the third kabaddi World Cup.

Unmindful of the policemen, enterprising food vendors have set up stalls. In the ground, a man dressed up as the Game's mascotan eagle called Jaanbazworks the crowd. Once play begins, two giant screens on either end of the pitch telecast images of the action being captured by many TV cameras, including one mounted on a boom crane that sweeps in an arc over the field of play. A local TV channel telecasts matches live. The broadcast includes pre-show, half-time and post-match discussions featuring men in coats and ties.

The game everyone is here to see is a combination of tag and wrestling. Each team of 10 players comprises four stoppers and four raiders. Each group of stoppers occupies one half of a circle roughly 44 metre in diameter. The centre line is called pallaa space about three-metre wide demarcated by sandbagsthrough which the raider comes, touches a stopper and then makes his way out into his own half through the same gate within 30 seconds to earn a point. A stopper has to prevent the raider from doing so. Anything short of punching and eye-gouging seems to be fair play. The game is different from the national-style kabaddi played at the Asian Games. That format has a rectangular playing area and seven stoppers all of whom go after a raider.

Sandeep Nangal Ambia, captain of the English team, scornfully compares the national style to amateur boxing while the circle style to professional prize fighting. Ambia is one of the stars of the tournament. He leads his men out to the field, all thickly muscled and many heavily tattooed. The Indian team which follows looks much the same. If not for their shortsred for England, blue for Indiathere is little way to differentiate the two teams. The English team has players of Punjabi origin, with most, like Ambia, born in India. Other than Pakistan and Iran, which have a history of playing the game, most teams are entirely of Punjabi descent.

The big game

The annual 15-day tournament, started in 2010 by the Punjab government, travels across the state with matches both at makeshift venues like Doda and floodlit stadiums at Amritsar and Ludhiana.

Visiting players find it hard to get used to how mainstream the sport is in this region. The sheer scale of the event overwhelms themright from the opening ceremony where team captains rode into Bathinda's stadium on Enfield motorcycles, to the fans, the vans of armed escorts and post-match interviews on TV. "I signed my first autograph here, and hundreds of them after that. One guy asked me to sign on a piece of toilet paper," says Ravi Sarai of Team Canada.

Having competed in four Olympics in judo, Orlando Baccino of Argentina isn't a stranger to high-profile events. Yet, he too is in awe. "When I play in front of the crowds over here, the atmosphere is intense. I feel this is what being a gladiator would have been like," he says.

The prize money is suitably big. With the backing of the state, at stake is Rs 2 crore for the winning team and, in a nod to the fan base of the game, bright-green tractors for the best raider and stopper. The cash tempts all sorts. A slew of players even tested positive for steroids last year. There is money to be made outside the ring as well, says Jett Bassi, a news reporter for Canada's national CTV network, who is also covering kabaddi for various websites. "There are several kabaddi club owners here. If players perform well here, they could get a chance to get picked for clubs in the UK and Canada," he says.

Despite the money on offer, the standards vary sharply with teams like India, Pakistan, Canada and Iran blowing out their opponents. To give the tournament an international feel, federations that have barely enough players to scrape together a playing side have been entered to get a 15-team draw in the men's section, with all travel and boarding paid for. The USA women's team has three Indian players on student visas, while the Canadian women's team has three middle-aged Indians and their daughters. Many teams feature hastily retrained weightlifters, mixed-martial-arts fighters and wrestlers. The Scottish team are amateur rugby players from a local college who looked incredibly scrawny when matching up to their beefy opponents. The Kenyan team even had a coach sent over by the Punjab government to get the players to a passable standard.

"This tournament is being called a World Cup but we know it isn't. A World Cup happens once every four years. I'm not complaining but we have tougher games than this in our club tournaments in Canada and India," says Hardeep 'Tauo' Singh, captain of the Canadian team.

Jesper Klostermann speaks for the rest of his Danish kabaddi team when he says picking up the game was simply an opportunity to travel. Their president Allan Jakobsen had earlier been president of the wrestling federation. It was only when he got the invitation to the World Cup three months ago that Jakobsen decided to form a team. Not having enough Indians in Denmark to make a team, he called wrestlers instead. Klostermann, a Greco-Roman wrestler who has competed in the European Championships, said 'yes' to the paid holiday.

"It was funny at first. I couldn't put together the idea of guys holding hands and trying to look intimidating. Coach was telling me I had to make an angry face but I couldn't stop smiling," says the 22-year-old. Less than two months of kabaddi training later, Klostermann is playing in the World Cup though he admits his side has no chance of winning. "I wanted to play the game, but I also wanted to see the country. It is an experience. The owner of the hotel we are staying at is getting his daughter married and we are looking forward to being a part of the wedding, doing all the dancing and eating and all," he says.

Argentine raider Yuri Maier is accomplished in the sport of wrestling, and at 23, is an active competitor, winning a medal at the Pan-American Games last year and preparing for Rio. Competing in the Kabaddi World Cup for the second year, Maier says kabaddi was a natural addition to his wrestling career. "In Argentina, girls play hockey, boys play soccer and men grapple. And wrestling is like warming up for kabaddi. This is a masculine game," he says. It is a belief shared by Jesus Chavez, one of the two non-Indians in the USA team. "You don't play hidden behind shoulder pads or helmets. You don't have cleats. It is a little disconcerting that you don't have a solid foothold on the ground. You are slipping and sliding and that is electric," says Chavez, a college wrestler and a semi-pro football player.

In the Argentina vs USA match in Amritsar, a raider in the US territory was challenged by Chavez. After pinning his target, Chavez, his ear bloodied in the struggle, backflipped and thumped his chest to gloat. As the Argentines protested, Chavez mouthed off. Soon, even as the uncomprehending audience and officials watched, perhaps for the first time, there was an exchange of the choicest Spanish swear words over a kabaddi match.

All the talk of machismo though doesn't make the women who have picked up the sport any less enthusiastic. There are seven women's teams participating in the tournamentwomen entered the tournament last year. "Just because we are women doesn't make us any less interested in the game. It's a bit violent so it can put some women off," says Joy Bentzen, captain of the Danish women's team, who won their match against Canada at Doda.

Playing in Canada

Standing at 6' 3'' and weighing about 108 kg, Hardeep Singh is one of the most intimidating stoppers in kabaddi. He prefers to be called Tauouncle. Opponents gave him the nickname and he has it tattooed on the knuckles of his left fist. Despite his fearsome appearance, Tauo is a genial man off field with a taste for cappuccino. It is a habit he developed in Canada where he plays professional kabaddi.

Tauo, 28, who grew up in a small village near Jalandhar, makes a fair bit of money playing the game in the west. The season is three or four months long, starting in June and finishing in September.

While matches are held in the UK and the US, the Canadian kabaddi season is the most lucrative, with some team owners spending upwards of 100,000 dollars buying players for the season. Attendance at local playing grounds can be in several hundreds for matches that are held on the weekend. "Because both Toronto and Vancouver have big clubs, they host tournaments every alternate week," says Tauo. "The competition there is really tough. In the Kabaddi World Cup, India can pick only 14 players with many sitting out. But in Canada, at any season there will be maybe a hundred Indians playing," he says.

Once the season in Canada ends, the players head to the US for a month working their way down the country. These aren't tournaments but just one-off matches. New York is the centre of action though Fresno and Lodi in California host big matches too.

With no expenses to worry aboutclub owners take care of food and boardingan average player makes about 20,000 dollars a season. Tauo says he makes 50,000-60,000 dollars in a season. The game also opens doors for other opportunities. "Most Punjabi business owners have a lot of respect for players. If you ever need a job in the off season, they willingly offer it to you," he says. When the playing season abroad ends, Tauo returns to India where he plays

local tournaments. The money doesn't comparearound Rs 5 lakh in a good seasonbut he says it helps him keep in touch with his roots.

ALSO READ CBI sought part RTI exemption, Govt gave it full

Please read our terms of use before posting comments