The popular tournaments held at the San Jose Punjabi Mela will be back.
In the team, or transnational, style of kabaddi, two teams of seven occupy opposite halves of a field of 12.5m × 10m (roughly half the size of a basketball court). Each has five supplementary players held in reserve. The game is in 20-minute halves, with a five-minute half-time break during which the teams switch sides.
Teams take turns sending a “raider” to the opposite team’s half, where the goal is to tag or wrestle (”confine”) members of the opposite team before returning to the home half. Tagged members are “out” and sent off the field.
Meanwhile, defenders must form a chain, for example by linking hands; if the chain is broken, a member of the defending team is sent off. The goal of the defenders is to stop the raider returning to the home side before taking a breath. If the raider takes a breath before returning, the raider is sent off the field.
A player can also get out by going over a boundary line or part of the body touches the ground outside the boundary, except during a struggle with an opposing team member.
Each time a player is out the opposing team earns a point. A team scores a bonus of two points, called a Iona, if the entire opposing team is declared out. At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins.
Matches are staged on age and weight. Six officials supervise a match: one referee, two umpires, a scorer and two assistant scorer. {Cited from Wikipedia}
