The First Month of the Regular Season: When Kabaddi's Fixture List Apologized to the Farmers' Harvest

Last week, inside an indoor hall in Jaipur, I watched the first month of the regular season close. Three matches, three different nights, three different faces of the same team. On the first night their raider scored 11 points and they won 38-30. On the third night that same raider managed 4 points and they lost 27-41. What changed in between? No captain change, no tactical flip. Just the fixture list doing its work — two travel legs, a bus seat where a rest day should have been, and a group game nobody had scouted. My first notebook still smells like that first press box, and on its first page is written: "No scapegoat clause." The first month of this season proved that rule right once again.

The start of any regular season is supposed to be about stories — a new auction, a new coach, a new physio, and that old captain every channel calls "the face of the franchise." But I have been walking this caravan for eight years, and I know the first month is never about stories. It is about logistics. Travel schedules. Recovery hours that never make it to a broadcast graphic. This season I watched 19 matches across seven cities in the first four weeks, and before every single one I checked one thing: how many kilometres separated the two teams over the previous seven days, and how many hours of sleep they had logged. The pattern that emerged was cleaner than any scoreline on television.

Let me start with a basic point, because I know many people who follow this sport as a career stop here. Standard-style kabaddi — the code played at the Asian Games, the World Cup, and the Pro Kabaddi League — gives you a 40-minute match, but a team's real work begins 48 hours before. Before a player steps on the mat, the muscles must have recovered from the previous match's tackles. A kabaddi tackle is not a cricket cover drive; it is the sport of dropping one body onto another. A raider dashes 12 to 15 times in a match on average, each dash a 4-to-6-metre sprint, and every second raid requires him to absorb the weight of one or two defenders. Since 2026 I have kept a simple spreadsheet linking every team's raid points and tackle points to the rest days between matches. The pattern across the last five seasons is identical: a team given less than 48 hours between back-to-back matches sees its raid success rate drop by an average of 6 to 9 percentage points in the second match, and its missed tackles rise by 12 to 18 percent. This number does not match the league's official data because the league does not link rest days this way — but in my notebook it has read the same for six years.

Now this season's first month. The team I was watching in Jaipur played its first three matches in three different cities — Jaipur, Patna, Hyderabad. No home game in between. Before the second match they had only 36 hours, of which 5 went to airports and flights. I met their physio, who has been with them for four seasons. He said — and I will not name him because he still works with the team — "Our recovery protocol is built for 48 hours. When we get 36, we can do ice baths and compression for only 20 minutes instead of 40. Everything else is a compromise." In that second match their star raider attempted 9 raids and scored 2 points. In the third match he got a 60-hour break and scored 8 points from 14 raids. The scoreline said "comeback"; my notebook said "sleep."

There is one moment I remember that was perhaps the clearest signal of this whole month. In Patna, in the third minute of the second half, that team's captain rotated his left shoulder in a tackle as if he did not trust it. The tackle was missed, and the opposing raider touched the bonus line for two points. Commentary called it "the captain's mistake." But I went back and watched the team's previous match — he had made three successful tackles with that same shoulder in match one, and in match three he went for four tackles with that shoulder and succeeded three times. In the 36 hours in between, the shoulder muscle had no time to recover. It was not a mistake. It was fatigue. And fatigue never appears on a scorecard.

One more thing from this season that got little media attention: the referees. In the first four weeks I saw three decisions where a raider was given out on the bonus line, and all three were correct — but all three involved the same raider who had played 40 minutes on the mat in the previous match, and whose initial burst was visibly lower in the first 10 minutes. I logged refereeing decisions across all 19 matches this first month: 27 out-of-bounds calls in total, and 19 of them involved a player who had played two matches in the previous 72 hours. This is not a referee's error. It is not the player's error either. It is the error of a fixture list drawn up in a room where no physio was sitting.

Now the part that stings most — and which the first month has reopened. Some teams fielded players in group games whom they had bought at auction as "depth" but never tried in a single practice match. I have the names of three teams that used only 18 of their 30 players in the first four weeks. The other 12 sat on the bench, including three whose auction price was above 40 lakh. This is not new — but this time it surfaced for a specific reason. Teams that fielded more than 22 players in the first month averaged 8.4 more points across their last five matches than teams that used fewer than 18. This is not merely the benefit of rotation — it is proof that players who got chances were less tired in the next match because they had played fewer minutes in the previous one.

I also need to be clear, because over eight years I have read many columns that divide this sport into two camps. I am not one of those who says the pro league ruined village mud-court kabaddi. My notebook records what the standard-style code improved — the athleticism of corner defenders, bonus-line raiding, and data literacy. The kabaddi played on Punjab's mud courts is circle style, with its own tradition — I will not put it in the same sentence as standard style. They are separate codes, with separate rules, separate fitness, separate economies. Whenever I write a result, I label the code in the first line. This is not pedantry; it is honesty toward the sport I have made my career.

Now the part nobody writes. One more thing happened in this season's first month that never showed on the scoreboard: some teams chose to hold their practice sessions at the exact time their next opponent was playing. I found out when I went to a team's training hall in Hyderabad and found only 8 players there. The other 12 were in the video room, watching their next opponent's previous match. This is not a new tactic, but this time it was applied differently: the team cancelled its physical session entirely that day and did only mental prep. In their next match they scored 43 points, their season high. I asked their coach who made the call. He said, "Our analyst looked at the last three matches' data and said our mind was more tired than our body. We trusted him." For me this is the season's biggest signal: the biggest advantage in the regular season is going to teams that treat "training" as mental as well as physical. This runs against the old thinking that kabaddi is only about strength and speed.

Now the counter-intuitive part that always surfaces. Of the teams winning the most in this first month, two have star raiders not yet in their best form — their raid strike rate is around 38%, below the league's top-10 raiders. Yet the team is winning. Why? Because their defenders have held opposing raiders to an average of 2.8 points per raid this first month, far better than last season's 3.6. Media attention is on the raider, but the real trend of this first month is that winning teams are being built by defensive positioning, not raiding. One example: last week I watched a team's corner defender shift 30 centimetres back from his position on every raid. It sounds small, but it forces the opposing raider to take 0.4 seconds longer to reach the bonus line, and in those 0.4 seconds his partner corner closes in. This is the detail that never makes a highlight reel but shows up in the fixture list and the data sheet.

There is another way to read these numbers, and it has been troubling me most this season. The coaches of both teams I have been discussing attended the same seminar before the season — a retreat in Tamil Nadu where coaches and analysts from all 14 teams were present. I did not get to go, but a fellow journalist told me there was a session on "reading the fixture list." Forty people sat in a room and all asked the same question: "How do we protect our team in the first month?" The data shown in answer was exactly what is in my notebook — performance drops with less than 48 hours of break. Yet after that seminar, six teams repeated the same mistake in their first month. Why? Because the league office makes the fixture list, not the team. And the team has no control over it. This is what I write every year and what stings someone every year: the answer to a player's fatigue is not in the player's body, but in the calendar drawn up in an office.

Now the moment that nagged at me until last week. In that third match in Jaipur, as the team was losing 27-41, I saw their captain on the bench — he did not play the last 6 minutes. Commentary said "the coach rested him." I went looking. I learned his sleep over the previous three days was under 14 hours, because the travel schedule had a night flight and practice at 7 am the next morning. He told me, "I wasn't tired, I was just slow." This is the sentence I hear at least once every season, and every time it takes me back to that Jakarta night in 2026, when I first wrote on the first page of my notebook — no scapegoat. That 18-27 score, that loss, I still remember it. Someone blamed a player then too. And I looked at the fixture list then too.

One more signal from this first month that few caught. Of the teams on winning streaks, three did not change their starting seven even once in their first four matches. It sounds minor, but to me it is the biggest proof of stability. In kabaddi, changing the seven means changing the team's mental framework. A team that does not change its seven is saying: we know who stands where, and we trust it. Over the last five seasons I have seen that teams keeping their seven stable in the first month have a greater than 70% chance of reaching the playoffs. This number is from my notebook, not the league's official data.

Now the point I make every time and that irritates someone every time. In this sport the fixture list gets the most blame, and the people who make it get the least. In this season's first month I watched 19 matches across 14 teams. Eleven of them had one team getting 24 hours less break than the other. This is not a question of balance; it is a question of arithmetic. And when you build a 40-match schedule with 12 teams, some teams getting less break is inevitable. But if you cannot change the home-away format to reduce that imbalance, you can at least give those teams more recovery resources. I asked whether the league office does this. The answer was that every team gets equal facilities. But my notebook records that of the teams with less break, three had not hired extra staff with their physio because the budget had no room. So the question is: does "equal facilities" mean equal opportunity? For me, no.

One more thing this first month made clear. Teams giving chances to young players are not just building the future — they are winning now. Across 19 matches I noted 8 players who played more than 5 league matches for the first time. Five of them made more than 20 tackle points in their first four matches. Three of these players went unsold at auction and came through the "New Young Player" category. This is what I have said since 2026: the biggest wins in the transfer market belong to teams that pick players from small clubs and small tournaments, not those that bid highest for the most expensive raider. This season's first-month data says exactly that.

I know some reading this will say it is all excuses. Someone will say if a player is good, what does fatigue matter. But I would show them the shoulder of that captain who missed a tackle in Patna, then made three successful tackles with the same shoulder in the third match. The difference was 24 hours. I would show them that raider who scored 4 points on a 36-hour break and 8 on a 60-hour break. The difference was sleep. I would show them that team that cancelled its physical session and scored 43. The difference was the mind. These are not excuses; they are the data that comes out of the fixture list.

Now the forward signal. The biggest signal of this first month is that teams reading their calendar are pulling ahead of teams relying only on their star players. Over the next three weeks, as the season hits its busiest stretch, that gap will widen. Teams that fielded more than 22 players in the first month will have fresh players over the next three weeks. Teams that bet on 18 will have fatigue — and fatigue never appears on a scorecard, but it always appears on the fixture list.

As I write this, three things are on my desk: an old notebook whose first line reads "No scapegoat clause," a printout of the travel data from this season's 19 matches, and a cup of coffee gone cold. I did not write all this because I have a complaint against the fixture list. I wrote it because I know that next week, when some team loses, some player will be blamed. And I want my notebook to be there when that question is asked. Because the caravan that runs outside the camera is accounted for only by those who walk it. And this season's first month has proved once again — teams that understand that caravan win. Everyone else watches the scoreline.