I always thought of Kabbadi as a game that children played in the streets of India but never as a competitve sport. But Kabbadi is a sport that was played in the Asian games, India won gold however Iran put up a very good fight. The Iranian women's team burst into loud cries when they lost to India in the semi-finals, not sure I have ever seen a team that emotional before, it was an extremely close match and they had an equal chance of winnning.
After the Commonwealth Games and now the Asian games, sports other than cricket have come to the forefront in the news. Background stories of the gold medal winners fill the pages of the newspapers. Reporting has moved on past Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal and the olympic gold medal winners and other athletes are sharing the limelight. Many of these athletes may not win at the olympics but the past few months have given them the opportunity to shine at different venues and inspire other up and coming Indian atheletes.
Every day we see new coaching centers for tennis pop up and interest in golf has skyrocketed in India. Rushil attends a soccer coaching center which is quite popular and has branches throughout Bangalore. Cricket coaching centers exist and it is still the mostly widely played sport on the playgrounds but these other sports are increasing in popularity. The quality of the coaching is improving and is becoming more formalized and compared to the US, still affordable. It'll be interesting to see how this will all playout in the future.
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