What's New: Kabaddi Cops

(Video courtesy kulwinderkooner)

What's New is an occasional series looking at new and emerging sports.

Kabaddi is not a new sport. Its origins date back hundreds of years, to various regional tag-type games played across the Indian subcontinent. The modern version of kabaddi was founded in 1918, when officials in India’s Maharashtra state wrote down the first standardized set of rules. The sport received its first international exposure when it was demonstrated at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

In Canada, however, kabaddi is a relatively young game. The first league was organized by a group of Punjabi immigrants in the 1970s. Less than 40 years later, Canada is something of an emerging powerhouse. The national team came second in the recent World Cup, losing to host team India in the finals, and in Peel Region — a large, suburban district west of Toronto — the police are using the sport for community outreach.

 To the naked eye, Peel’s two largest cities — Mississauga and Brampton — look like any other pair of Canadian suburbs. Vast tracts of siding-clad semis, coral-coloured McMansions and warren-like townhouse developments are arranged into confusing swirls of crescents and cul-de-sacs, while big box store line wide, highway-like main roads. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find that the two cities are less white bread and more roti. The Region is every bit as multicultural as neighbouring Toronto, and in some areas, more so. As of the 2006 Census, just under half of Peel Region residents were born outside of Canada, and 32 per cent of those newcomers were born in either India or Pakistan. Punjabi is the region’s second most commonly spoken language.

For the Peel Regional Police, kabaddi has become a powerful outreach tool. The force founded its kabaddi team in 2003 as a way of interacting with a large and fast-growing community, and now plays up to four exhibition matches a year, including one against the Toronto Police Service, which founded its team in 2008.

“We have a large South Asian community in Peel, particularly in Brampton,” said Insp. Rob Ryan, the team's liason officer. “It was just a way for us to enhance our relationship with that community. We have enough South Asian officers that know how to play the sport.”

For the uninitiated, kabaddi is a hard game to fathom. Like any modern sport, it has a long and constantly evolving set of rules, but at its core, the sport works like this: The game consists of two 20-minute halves. Each team takes turns sending an offensive player, called a raider, into the opposing zone. The raider has 30 seconds to cross into half-way line, tag a defender, called an anti or stopper — who stay in their own end, either holding hands or linking arms — and run back into his own zone. It’s the antis’ job to stop the raider from getting back to his own side, by either tackling and confining him or pushing him out of bounds.

Ryan has an even simpler description of the game.

“Someone described it to me as a cross between red rover and British bulldog, and that’s a good description,” said Ryan. “It doesn’t look like there’s much to it, but in reality, it’s a tough game. Someone once said about Texas Hold ‘Em Poker that it takes minutes to learn it and a lifetime to master it, and I think that’s true of this sport, too.”

Sgt. Navi Chhinzer is the team’s manager and coach, as well as a player. The son of South Asian immigrant parents, Chhinzer grew up in Peel and started playing kabaddi in his teens. He says that while changing demographics have a lot to do with the sport’s growing popularity in Canada, kabaddi is also attracting converts from other cultures.

“For South Asians, it’s our national sport, but then other people go on and watch it and go ‘Oh wow! This is crazy stuff,’ he said. “People have realized that if you have a wrestling background, an MMA background, track athletes, football players, that this is something different. It’s a new, exciting sport with new challenges to pursue. [Former Canadian Olympic wrestler] Daniel Igali played kabaddi for three years, and was the most popular guy on the team for those three years, and one of... the best players on that team for those three years. He was something special... We’ve got a couple guys on the US team who are former NCAA football players who have taken up kabaddi. They’re linemen who have the skill set to play kabaddi, and they’ve got the size, which is a huge bonus. We’re starting to attract people from a lot of other sports. “

In his role as Peel’s coach, Chhinzer is charged with helping a team made up overwhelmingly of non-South Asian players from a multitude of athletic backgrounds learn the sport. He admits that it’s not always an easy task.

“We’ve got a lacrosse player on our team, and he’s like ‘Well, let’s just brawl,’” he said. “You can’t just brawl. You’re not going to get the point... With my experience from the past and my contacts in the community, I’ve been able to develop the team at a faster rate and develop them into more experienced players.”

One of the relative newcomers to the game on the Peel Police team is raider Const. Adrian Wooley. For MMA fans, Wooley’s name may sound familiar. In addition to being a detective with the force and a former member of Canada’s national wrestling team, Wooley also has a 7-4 record as a professional bantamweight, having fought for promotions such as W-1 and the Score Fighting Series. Wooley has embraced the sport with the zeal of the converted, but he admits he didn’t even know what kabaddi was prior to his involvement with the team.

“At first I didn’t… know what they were talking about,” he said. “But then I watched it a couple of times and was like ‘I have to try that.’”

As a fighter and former wrestler, Wooley says that one of the main challenges for him as a kabaddi player is getting used to taking on much larger opponents.

“In wrestling and MMA, I fight guys the same size,” he says. “I’m 135, you’re 135, let’s lock cage and go at it, same thing in wrestling. In kabaddi, I could be going up against guys that are 220 pounds. I love that challenge. If you throw down that gauntlet, I’ll pick it up each and every time.”

The Peel Police kabaddi team has developed an international reputation, and has started receiving invitations to play in matches far away from their home turf in Brampton.

“We’ve been invited by the Indian General Consulate to go play in India,” said Chhinzer. “We’ve been invited to go play in England. They’ve heard about this in non-South Asian kabaddi team and it’s caught on like wildfire.”

As fun as it is to have overseas admirers, Chhinzer maintains that the team’s most important achievement has been building a relationship between the force and Peel’s South Asian community.

“When they see us out there playing their national sport, it gives them a sense of belonging and a sense of pride,” he said. “They go, ‘This is a police service that serves us.’ We are public servants, and we like to give back to the community, whether it’s through a fundraising event, a charity event, or just going and meeting with the kids and mentoring them. It allows them to feel part of the community.”