Top 10 Legends in Kabaddi History
Here are the top 10 kabaddi players of all times. The VIVO Pro Kabaddi League abbreviated PKL took off way back in 2014. That is when the game of kabaddi began to have its first professional league. Thereafter, the game took off and fast.
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And since kabaddi is now emerging as the fastest growing sport of India and is fast gaining popularity worldwide, so thought we’d take just that little time out of our hectic lives to look at the top ten players to have ever graced this incredible sport.
1. Pardeep Narwal (UP Yoddah)
If someone is going to leave a legacy of being called the “Dubki King”, not so bad after all
Current club: UP Yoddah
The greatest raider kabaddi has ever seen-that is at least true for most of those who watch and follow the sport with fervor.
He has a long list of feats of stretches: he has the number of the most goals ever scored, has the most raids in history, ever most super 10s, the first man to get the Most Valuable Player back to back, and he was the first man to reach the 1,000 points mark.
Outside PKL, Narwal has won a gold medal with the Indian national team in South Asian Games 2019. Other than that, he has some records also from where it can be seen that he won titles three successive times with Patna Pirates.
The most memorable one is when he scored eight points in just raid only to a match against Haryana Steelers
2. Anup Kumar (Rtd)
Many fans affectionately call him the “God of Kabaddi”.
A tale of Kumar, which flows from a small boy who played just for the fun to end up being one of the most prolific raiders which this game ever produced
He now plays for Jaipur Pink Panthers after five years in U Mumba.
But one hardly treasures glistening gold medals from helping Indian national teams win gold medals at Asian Games in both 2010 and 2014. His resume therefore speaks to him having only one MVP throughout his career which makes legacy define him as one of the first superstars in the sport that makes him one of the greatest to play the game.
3. Rahul Chaudhari (Jaipur Pink Panthers)
Not a player usually seen to be switched from raider to defender in Vivo Pro Kabaddi League, but so flowed smoothly for Rahul Chaudhari, kabaddi’s most risk-laden raider ever.
Hero of the ground Euphoria-an entertainer and so holds his bling as he raids and outside the court, his life seems a movie, his signature running hand touch has given him PKL legendary status.
Chaudhari will be the third player to attain 1,000 raid points, but he will also be a veteran, having played in all seasons so far of PKL.
He might be running to the end of his career, but Chaudhari still is a play workable performer for Jaipur Pink Panthers and had recently taken Uttar Pradesh to the National Games title.
4. Deepak Niwas Hooda (Bengal Warriors)
The Hooda story is tragedy.
Born to an agricultural family from the Chamaria village in Rohtak district in Haryana, when his mother had died, he was merely four years old. His father had died in 2013 .
But kabaddi has remained the savior so far and changed the course of life; now he goes famed as one of the most clinical all-rounders ever in the sport.
Till date, he had surpassed over 1,100 total points, 250 tackles and 2,000 raids in his entire PKL career.
He was awarded the India captains at the end of the year 2019.
5. Naveen Kumar (Dabang Delhi K.C.)
Naveen Kumar was one of those budding stars emerging to reckoning as just someone who happened to be the first child of the 21st century to play in the PKL.
Today, he is the best raider that the game has ever seen and only the second man in the history of the league to win two successive MVP awards.
But Kumar has had a knack of turning up when his team needs him the most, and that is precisely what happened in PKL season eight’s finale.
He is also a cricketer-albeit for India-in their kabaddi success at the South Asian games sometime back and many feel that when experience plays its ultimate trick, his career will be way ahead of the kabaddi icon, Pardeep Narwal, by a great margin.
Kumar hit the miraculous super 10 that won the team the match against Patna Pirates with just one point in that thriller of a game.
6. Pawan Sehrawat (Tamil Thalaivas)
He made a spectacular debut for the league by scoring a season’s sixth with 282 points, out of which 22 points came in the final game, making Bull’s win against Gujarat Giants.
In the next season, he continued and broke a PKL record with that unbelievable 39 points that he scored within a single game. He also won the tag of MVP of that season.
Scores of showmanship have never been seen in everyday life. Recent Transfer: Sehrawat was traded from Bulls to Tamil Thalaivas for a record ₹2.26 crore, approximately about $280,000.
Not as lucky though is that Sehrawat has been able to play only a handful of the 2022 season’s games since he injured his bad knee just ten minutes into the opening game of the season.
We can just sit back, relax and see him play and add feathers to his already crowded legacy while picking up his strength.
7. Maninder Singh (Bengal Warriors)
One of the others was one of that man-who, by points amassed dominated the history of Pro Kabaddi and found second to Genu Nizumdar with 1,126 points, raider as well as the captain of Bengal Warriors, Maninder Singh.
He played for the first season of Pro Kabaddi for Jaipur Pink Panthers.
They were just a title win away and Singh had netted 130 points. Then came the hammer blow of a huge injury to the back that ruled him out for the next three PKL seasons and traded him to Bengal Warriors in 2017.
Miraculously, Singh recovered from the injury and already accounted for 190 points through his second season. He made the following year the fastest in history to score raid points both to 400 and 500.
Singh led Warriors to its first title win in 2019 while missing some end-season games due to injury.
Perhaps the skipper of Bengal Warrior has been in the league for quite a pretty long time and has had enough knocks and injuries as well. Still, he shows no signs of slackening. On the other hand, on November 5, Singh delivered his career-best 20 raid points against Gujarat Giants.
Needless to say, strictly speaking by those criteria, as many as nine players could have ended up in the top eleven. One from the pack of players like Chandran Ranjit from Bengal Warriors, Mohit from UP Yoddha or Surjeet Singh from Bengal Warriors is a must. But only one man fits this bill perfectly.
8. Fazel Atrachali (Bengal Warriors)
Iran-born Atrachali can, for all practical purposes, be said to likely rattle PKL with his defensive-tackling prowess that confirms him as the best defender ever to play this game.
He has bagged the 379 most tackle points in the history of PKL. He is the first and only player to have 400 tackle points EVER.
He was a Best Defender in Atrachali and he won the title two times, but tasted this tag just a few seasons ago in season 7 with a rich haul of 82 tackle points.
Atrachali had a season 4, in which he mustered 45 tackle points when Patna Pirates went on to win the title.
This Iranian international is doing something different in the VIVO pro kabaddi league and also fuddling up some of the international competitions.
He led Iran to a 2018 Asian Games victory by outclassing India 27-18 in the semi-final and South Korea 26-16 later.
9. Sandeep Narwal (UP Yoddahs)
His was the rise of adaptation and evolution. The one who began as a corner defender evolved into one of the finest all-rounders the game ever witnessed. He came with super tackles in maximum numbers of 29 ever.
An aggressor in defence, he brought much new impetus that respected all the compartments of the game and in his very landmark season 3, made himself indispensable to the Patna Pirates defense.
Agility finally gives way to brute strength and unpredictability with him becoming one of the legends of the game.
In last seasons, he wasn’t doing too good but joined UP Yoddahs so do have great hopes of the team mending their fortunes.
10. Ajay Thakur (Dabang Delhi K.C.)
He is a person who is one of the most consistent raiders in VIVO pro kabaddi league history.
He represented the team of Bengaluru Bulls, Puneri Paltan, Tamil Thalaivas, and Dabang Delhi K.C. for many years.
Since PKL, the man of the title “King of Kabaddi” made sure that the Indian national team continues winning gold in 2017 Asian Kabaddi Championship. He boasts more than 800 points and features in over 110 games so Thakur is a personification of experience and quality.
