It’s been lonely at the top of the Kabaddi world for India, and Ejjapureddi Prasad Rao knew this all too well. As kabaddi’s top coach, he’s guided Indian players to win 60 gold medals in international tournaments for the sport. The Asian Games introduced Kabaddi as a category in 1990, and India has won the top spot ever since. But asides from other South Asian nations, the sport had no other international presence – nor a slot in the Olympics.
‘Kabaddi’ Rao knew no sport can survive when only one country is good at it. So he started travelling the world, raising Kabaddi teams from scratch in other nations, in a bid to get more countries hooked on the sport. He went to South Korea in 2001 and scoured for talent at the sporting city of Busan. “Those who are not doing very good in other sports, we got them to kabaddi. They were already physically fit, so it was easy for us to train them with our requirements,” says Rao.
Till 2014, he trained the South Korean national team, before handing the mantle over to Jaiveer Sharma. Over the years, Indian coaches have been in demand to coach other countries’ national teams, such as M.J. Sunder Ram (Japan), K. Ganesh (Poland) or K.C. Suthar (Iran).
Before 2000, none of these countries had Kabaddi teams. By 2014, Iran had faced India in two Asian Games finals – beating Bangladesh and Pakistan for the number two spot in international Kabaddi. The sport’s biggest upset came in 2016 when South Korea beat India in the very first match of the Kabaddi World Cup. And if you catch an episode of the popular Japanese anime ‘Gintama’ or ‘Full Metal Panic’, you might catch a scene of the sport casually included as a part of Japanese sporting life.
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