New Delhi: In its endeavor to promote a multi-sporting culture in the country, India’s leading sports broadcaster Star Sports has organised an inter school state level kabaddi tournament, KBDY STARS in New Delhi. The tournament was organised with support of the Delhi government to encourage sporting talent and stimulate the indigenous game of kabaddi amongst young kids.
A big step towards boosting interest and participation for kabaddi, KBDY Stars inter school state level tournament witnessed participation from 13,000 students from 700 schools across 70 constituencies in Delhi. The main categories of students who participated in the tournament were U-14 and U-17 for boys whilst girls participated in an open category.
The initiative aims at creating more windows of opportunities for budding players in kabaddi and is a step towards building a strong foundation of the ecosystem around the game. In its effort to ensure that kabaddi is played across various ages and levels of skill, Star Sports has extended their support to promote kabaddi tournaments and competitions across the country with the biggest in New Delhi.From being part of the Inter-Zonal Kabaddi Tournaments in New Delhi in association with the Delhi government, tournaments were also organised across four more cities in India including Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad garnering huge response and participation.
The extensive grassroots programme for kabaddi went bigger and better as it saw participation across age groups too. 14 teams from four IIM (Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Calcutta and Lucknow) also participated and played kabaddi in January 2016 edition of IIM Sangharsh, the annual sports meet across IIMs at Ahmedabad. The organisers received an overwhelming response for the sport in its introduction to the event enthusing students as much as any other sport, and decided on making kabaddi a regular affair not only in Sangharsh but also in other sport events on IIM campus going forward.
Star Sports Pro Kabaddi had a vision to galvanise a traditional Indian sport and transform it into an aspirational game for players and fans. The winner for the KBDY stars tournament organised in New Delhi were as follows:
Open category girls: Bijwasan defeated Najafgarh by a score-line of 16-9.
Under-14 boys: Vikaspuri defeated Mundka 32-21.
Under 17 boys: Narela beats Tughlakabad by 12-8.
