Thalaiva of Kabaddi

Ajay Thakur is on a roll in the Pro-Kabaddi League. In Tamil Thalaivas’ last two matches, he played a significant role in giving his team narrow wins, the last one against Gujarat coming in the last minute raid by Ajay. He has played for 12 years for the country with distinction but Ajay Thakur is not finished yet. 

The 31-year-old has already played his part in India’s triumph in the Incheon Asian Games (2014), Asian Indoor Games and World Cup (2016). Ajay is getting ready to play at the home turf in Chennai this week. The team has come back from the dead in the last two matches and there are many more matches to go.

In a free-wheeling chat with DTNext, Thakur shares his experience of playing kabaddi and his career graph in the last two decades. 

My journey for kabaddi began at home as all members of my family were in sports. My father was a wrestler and my uncle was a kabaddi coach and my brother, Rakesh Kumar, was the first one from Himachal Pradesh to represent India in kabaddi. Sports is inherent in me. I used to visit grounds with my father, at first I didn’t take it seriously, but when I saw everyone respects good sportspersons, I thought I should also make my career in sports.

Kabaddi wasn’t that much famous before the pro kabaddi league. In 2007, 2011,13 we even represented India in international tournaments like Asian games, indoor Asian games despite that we were unknown faces at that time, we were known in our villages and neighbourhood. But, after the pro kabaddi league and with the association of star sports and vivo, kabaddi has become famous in India. Kabaddi was not telecast on TV earlier and the game was out of audience reach.

Kabaddi is not a part of Olympics, it is in Asian games, indoor Asian games, it has its world cup, but I feel that in a few years, because of the popularity it is gaining by the day, it will become part of Olympics Games. You will not believe that today, kabaddi is played in 30 different nations. So, I am sure that in the next few years kabaddi will be a part of Olympics.

Unity. We have absolute trust and love in our team; I have never seen anyone blaming the other player for any mistakes, or anyone finding fault in others. I would say that our team’s strength is its unity. Whatever happens we are always there for each other, supporting each other, just like a family. 

Of course, we have hope, because if you see we have not lost any match with a very big margin, it’s always either by a point or two or it’s a tie. If you check the stats for the other teams, they have lost by 10, 12 or even 15 points but all the matches we lost were by a very narrow margin. I think we can turn it around.