Undiscovered sports of the world - a misinformed view

In a series of misinformed ramblings, Balls Of Gold aims to provide a little insight into some of the worlds less well known sports living up to our firm beliefe that there is no such thing as a bad sport (except Mark 'Choco' Williams - he's a tool), only bad people.

The first in the series is quite possibly the least known yet one of the most highly participated in sport in Asia*.

Now, I was heading down to Melbourne with a mate of The Balls, The Gay Vampire Midget (GVM), for happy family Christmas celebrations a few years ago.

After talking about the odds of the big bang theory being the same as a tornado blowing through a rubbish tip and spitting out a concorde and just before we got onto the importance of structural integrity amongst home made pies, our little mate introduced me to an intriguing sport which I had never heard of before.

Kabaddi.

Now, keep in mind the fact that our little mate that relayed the story had neither seen this sport played nor spoken to anyone that had any idea on it's rules or game play.

But - to this day it remains the single greatest undiscovered sport that I've come across.

The general gist of kabaddi is that you have two teams that take their turn defendeing and attacking.

Defence is made up of you and 4 team mates holding hands at one end of a volleyball court. Attack is made up of 1 person, a Raider, who has to make it from his end of the court, to the defence and then back to his end.

Now, this sounds kind of simple.

BUT - the Raider must hold his breath the whole time. And to ensure that he is in fact holding his breath, he must constantly repeat the name of the game.

So, in my head, I had this image of a bloke running around a volleyball court chanting out "Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabaddi..." as 5 guys that are all holding hands try to chase him down and stop him getting back to his end. How they manage to all run in sync with each other and not fall down in a screaming heap is beyond me, but The Balls' favourite midget assures us that this is the way the game goes.

Upon further research - that is, 4 blokes running up and down Flinders St in Melbourne playing their own version of Kabaddi after 7 sherberts - this is quite possibly the most entertaining and bewildering game that you will ever come across.

And just to add to the brilliance of the game, it was initially played by men in loin cloths that were all oiled up.

I implore you to go and find out more about this game - the national sport of Bangladesh.

* This does not resemble the truth in any form whatsoever.