Amid Pakistan's Withdrawal from Ahmedabad, Kabaddi's Real Battle Is in the System, Not on the Mat

I opened the notebook before I opened the laptop. When the news of the first Commonwealth Kabaddi Championship, scheduled for 23–31 October 2026 at the Veer Savarkar Sports Complex in Ahmedabad, came out, the first number to catch my eye was not 14 but 13. This 13 is the number that remains after Pakistan's late withdrawal. And this number is the most honest statement of the entire tournament. Because on a field where Iran is absent, Chinese Taipei is absent, and now Pakistan is also absent, India winning gold is not an achievement but an expected outcome. The real story is why Pakistan withdrew—and no kabaddi report is complete without asking that question.

This question matters all the more because Pakistan won no kabaddi medal at the 2026 Asian Games. According to the information available, this was the first time Pakistan missed out even on bronze in kabaddi. A country whose kabaddi tradition emerged from the mud of circle-style, which had held its place on the Asian Games podium for decades, suddenly returned empty-handed. And then, within weeks, it pulled out of Ahmedabad too. Whatever the reason for Pakistan's withdrawal—administrative clearance, visas, funding, or politics—from a sporting perspective, this withdrawal sends a very clear message: Pakistan no longer wants to enter a race in Standard Style kabaddi in which its chances of winning are rapidly shrinking.

A basic point needs to be understood here, especially for readers who only watch kabaddi on TV. Standard Style is the game played on a rectangular court, as in the Asian Games and the Pro Kabaddi League—seven players, a 13m × 10m mat, a 30-second raid, the continuous 'kabaddi-kabaddi' cant, the bonus line, the do-or-die raid. Circle Style, meanwhile, is played on a circular field, often with eight players, with simplified scoring. In the villages of Punjab, on both sides of the border, this circle style prevails. Kabaddi experts consider the two to be tactically almost different sports. In Circle Style, a raider can retreat without penalty; there is no do-or-die pressure. In Standard Style, every raid is a calculated risk. Raiders raised on Circle Style soil are often masters of one-on-one evasion but fall behind in structured multi-defender raids and disciplined corner-cover defence. Pakistan's real problem is not form; it is format.

I have returned to Jakarta 2026 again and again. In that semifinal, India lost 18-27 to Iran, days after a 23-24 defeat to South Korea. I did not look at that defeat; I looked at the system that made it possible. Iran's wrestling-derived ankle holds and chain tackles, with Fazel Atrachali as the reference point. After that day, I started writing Iran as a co-favourite in every preview. I still do. But in Pakistan's context, the same lesson applies from the other side. If Iran could translate its wrestling-based defence into Standard Style, why can't Pakistan? The answer lies in the system. Iran has a centralised training structure that prepares its players according to the international calendar. Pakistan has the same domestic circuit built on Circle Style, from which there is no structured pathway for Standard Style corner and cover specialists to emerge.

One more fact must be kept in mind: Pakistan is not part of the Pro Kabaddi League. Its players have no platform like the Indian league where they can raid against the best Standard Style defenders every week. India has the PKL, where every season 12 teams, more than 20 international-standard players, data coaching, and options in every position are available. India's strength is not one star raider but the ability to replace at every position. Pakistan does not have that. This difference showed in the medal-less Asian Games campaign, and also in the withdrawal from Ahmedabad.

But here I have to doubt my own argument. There is not a single statistic in the available information. No raid points, no tackle points, no success rate, no squad information. When the report only says 'did not reach the semifinals,' technical analysis becomes conjecture. Did the raiders fail or the defence? Was the squad dominated by players from Circle Style or Standard Style? None of this is known. So every conclusion being drawn is inference, not reporting. A report that contains not a single kabaddi statistic cannot explain the technical reasons for a team's decline.

The same applies to the other side of this tournament. Iran is not there, Chinese Taipei is not there, Pakistan is not there. Why none of them is there is not a question only of sport. Iran is not a Commonwealth country, so it can never come to this tournament. The tournament's design is such that the world's second-strongest team cannot even be included. Kabaddi's global hierarchy is India > Iran >> everyone else. And the Commonwealth Championship is a structure in which the second-placed team will always remain outside. This is not a coincidence; it is a design flaw. If you attach the label of a 'global title' to India's victory without Iran, it is the same kind of delusion as the 'guaranteed gold' before Jakarta 2026.

Pakistan's withdrawal makes this design flaw even clearer. Iran's absence lowered the standard, but Pakistan's absence removed the one fixture that draws the most viewers. India-Pakistan kabaddi is not just sport; it is emotion—for broadcasters, for sponsors, and for every tackle on the field. The Stage-1 report does not say why Pakistan is not sending a team. No clear reason, no official statement. Only a 'late withdrawal.' And a late withdrawal, in the kabaddi world, is usually administrative—clearance, visas, funding release. If that is the case, it is a great failure for the sport, because Pakistan needed this tournament the most.

Here it is necessary to look at the gap between the league and the international calendar. The PKL's traditional October–December window is busy for Indian players, and this tournament falls on 23–31 October. This is a direct clash for India. If India does not send its first-choice team, the tournament is weakened for yet another reason. And if it does, PKL preparation is affected. This is the biggest weakness of kabaddi's international calendar—very few tournaments, and those that exist are not linked to each other, with neither a ranking pathway nor a qualifying system.

In 2026, I covered a state-level exhibition match behind closed doors at Balewadi. Empty stadium, canned crowd noise. There I learned that atmosphere is built not from crowd volume but from detail—footwork, the rhythm of the cant, bench reactions. That day, Aslam Inamdar's 14 raid points were recorded in my notebook, and I built a one-page cant-rhythm chart so that the remote feed would feel alive. The same lesson applies to Ahmedabad. If this tournament is played in empty stands—and after Pakistan's withdrawal, it seems so—the atmosphere there too will be built from footwork and bench reactions, not from the crowd.

But amid all this, there is a question that troubles me the most. Is there a recognised body organising this tournament? The International Kabaddi Federation? A Commonwealth kabaddi body? Or a national federation running the event on its own? This one fact determines the status of the entire tournament. And this is where I must tell my readers clearly: inaugural edition, weak recognition, and a depleted field—such events are often labelled 'major international tournaments' in South Asian media. Until the recognised body is confirmed, the tournament's prestige level should be viewed with suspicion.

And from here, a contrarian view begins. Is Pakistan's withdrawal really just weakness? Or could it also be a rational decision? A team that has just lost its long unbroken medal streak at the Asian Games, which would stand against a field in Standard Style that it cannot beat—could skipping this tournament also be a strategic decision? I am not saying this is the reason. I am saying we should not see it only through the lens of politics or administration. We should also understand it from a sporting perspective.

Kabaddi's real problem is that it does not have enough international events. And when a team withdraws, the loss is not just that team's. For Pakistan, this tournament would have been another international experience for its players, another chance to play against Standard Style. Its absence not only weakened the tournament but also kept Pakistani kabaddi one more year away from Standard Style experience. This is a cycle that does not break.

Now another thing that stings me most in this whole story. Women's kabaddi. An Indian women's team with four Asian Games golds, and no franchise league for it. Men have the PKL, crore-rupee auctions, TV coverage, data analysis. Women have four Asian Games golds and a festival circuit—that's it. The Stage-1 report is also not clear on whether the Commonwealth Championship has a women's draw. If it does, what is its structure? How many teams? Chinese Taipei's absence weakens the women's draw more than the men's, because Chinese Taipei's women's team has been a genuine Asian Games medallist. But the report is silent on this.

This silence is the biggest weakness of this entire discourse. We are discussing Pakistan's withdrawal but know nothing about the team that is not coming. We are lamenting Iran's absence but not asking that Iran can never be invited because it is not a Commonwealth country. We are praising India's double gold but not seeing that this gold was won in a field where the second-strongest team was not even there.

I remember 2026. In Pune, I turned a campus radio slot into a YouTube watch-along, built a whiteboard around Patna Pirates' Pardeep Narwal. That season he had 369 raid points, the league MVP. For 43 classmates I called his dubki escapes live. The stream got 1,800 views, but a Pune digital editor emailed asking for a tactical breakdown. That is when I stopped writing previews like fixture lists. Every kabaddi piece began to be built around one technical question. This habit still saves me.

But getting stuck in the memory of Pardeep's dubki is the easiest trap. And I do not want to fall into it. The kabaddi of that era and today's kabaddi are different. Bonus-line raiding, running hand-touches, athletic corners—after 2026, the PKL changed the way the game is played, not just the market. The hold-and-tackle school learned on Punjab's soil has been replaced by athletic corners and fast running touches. Coaches who came from the old school were left behind. It is important to know who moved ahead and why, not just to mourn the death of the dubki.

Pakistan is a victim of this change. Its domestic circuit is built on Circle Style, and its players have no platform like the PKL where they can play against the new school every week. This is not just Pakistan's problem; it is the problem of international kabaddi as a whole. Apart from India and Iran, no country has a system that produces Standard Style matchups every year. And when there are no matchups, how will improvement happen?

So now, when we look towards Ahmedabad, the question is not how many points India will win by. The question is whether there is any team in this tournament that can challenge India for 30 minutes. Bangladesh, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Kenya—none of them has any evidence that they can beat India. And this is not good news for India either. A team that constantly plays weak opponents, how will it stay sharp against a dangerous rival like Iran? That was the lesson of Jakarta 2026—without preparation, without tough matchups, India lost 18-27 to Iran. And Iran was present then.

So I will not look at this tournament only through the lens of India's gold. I will look at it like an empty stadium. And an empty stadium tells you what a club or team is when nobody is watching. Without Pakistan, without Iran, without Chinese Taipei, this tournament will show how weak kabaddi's international structure is—and why we have left it to depend only on the Asian Games and the World Cup.

An autopsy is not a verdict at first glance. It is a second look. And the second look at Pakistan's withdrawal says that the real battle is not on the field but in the system. Until kabaddi has a strong, regular international calendar in which teams like Iran are included and teams like Pakistan are compelled to come, such withdrawals will continue. And with every withdrawal, the sport loses another opportunity. The question is: the next time a team withdraws, will we only cover the news or also look at the system that gave it room to withdraw?