Pro Kabaddi League, 2016

Pro kabaddi league, an initiative by Mashal Sports with an association with Star Sports is resolute to introduce kabaddi as a main-stream game in India. 2016, being the third season of the league, is successfully followed by the two former seasons and is played in a format of Indian Premier League T20 Cricket, popularly known as IPL throughout the nation. The pro kabaddi league was founded in 2014 and follows a caravan format by travelling through the country, playing 60 matches in all the 8 venues.

This year, as the course of selection continued and the eight pro kabaddi league teams enter the last leg of finalization, a total of 20 Kabaddi players have already changed teams from Season 2. Last year’s most valuable player of the tournament, Manjit Chhillar leads the pack with a move to Puneri Paltan from Bengaluru Bulls. Along with him, Ajay Thakur, Rakesh Kumar, Deepak Hudda, Jasmer Singh, Surjeet Narwal, Dharmaraj Cheralathan, Wassim Sajjad, Rajaguru Subramanain have been some of the biggest player movements of this season.

At the same time, the teams have also retained some of the star players of Kabaddi like Anup Kumar, Kashiling Adake, Ravinder Pahal, Rahul Chaudhari, Sukesh Hegde, Jan Kun Lee, Sandeep Narwal, Tae Deok Eom ensuring strong force across the eight teams. The international draft for the third season of Pro Kabaddi League too has received a strong response from participating franchises, with 24 international players being signed up from 12 countries. The 8-city Kabaddi league will now see new heroes and partnerships emerge as a result of these movements, starting the excitement for this season.

The first and second season pro kabaddi league was won by the Mumbai, named as U Mumba. Bengal Warriors are showing their colors this year with three wins in all three matches and are showing no sign of backing down. Reports say that the teams had started their inaugurating matches with good performances, but for Dabang Delhi it is indeed a bad season with five lost matches. It’s quite similar with the Jaipur Pink Panthers who were in a narrow balancing line and the margins of defeats are gradually decreasing.