A pop quiz question for an Indian sports fan: Which Indian women's sports team defended their World Cup title in November 2025, 13 years after winning their first? (No, it's not cricket; the ODI World Cup was India's first title at a tournament held every four years.)
Second clue: This is also the most popular indigenous sport in India.
You're right if you guessed kabaddi. The Indian team, captained by Ritu Negi and coached by veteran V Tejaswini Bai, won the 11-team World Cup in Dhaka, Bangladesh at the end of November. This was only the second Women's Kabaddi World Cup organised by the officially recognised International Kabaddi Federation, after the 2012 edition in Patna. Both were won comfortably by India, the global leaders in kabaddi.
If you didn't know, the reason is quite clear: unlike the men's game, which has a well-run league and where the players are now well paid (some of them stars in their own right), the women's game has almost been forgotten. This was brought into sharp contrast at a felicitation event organised by the Pro Kabaddi League, when both coach Tejaswini and team manager Pooja Sharma openly asked the organisers to start a women's Kabaddi league.
The irony of the men's-only PKL felicitating the women's kabaddi team was not lost on the people present. The spotlight PKL shone on the World Cup winners would cast a shadow on the men's only league, but they did it anyway. Anupam Goswami, PKL League Chairman and Business Head of Mashal Sport, said early on that he gets reminded by the coach about the players' aspirations for the game. Read: When will there be a women's PKL?
Tejaswini reiterated it soon after, to sheepish laughter from the room. "I just want to say that if a women's kabaddi league is started then more and more girls will be inspired to take up the sport.... if the players get the chance to play in a league it will be great for them."
The short answer is, not yet but they are committed to creating it. The long answer is more complicated.
The PKL - now 12 seasons old - experimented with a three-team Women's Kabaddi Challenge in 2016. That should have been the base for something new but remained a one-off event; how many PKL viewers can even remember that experiment, with larger mats meant for male athletes? The men's game meanwhile dominated the public consciousness; the women came to the forefront once every four years at the Asian Games - It even came to a complete standstill from 2018 to 2023..
Back in 2016, the federation's stand on a women's league was: "There are some challenges which need to be addressed.... when the time comes, we can launch a women's league."
That time is now, given the emphatic win at the 2025 Women's Kabaddi World Cup in Dhaka. India defeated Chinese Taipei 35-28 in the final, finishing their campaign unbeaten (including a 33-21 win over Iran in the semifinal). Negi injured her arm mid-final amid a tackle and had to be stretchered off early in the match, but the Indian team regrouped to lift the trophy again.
Goswami took the cue. "The time for women's league is upon us," he said. "It's our responsibility to have a women's league just as the men's.... Mashal and Jiostar have the commitment that when it [the women's league] happens it will happen with the same explosive impact as the men's. But there are three factors to consider."
The first thing he mentioned is the length of a women athlete's career, which is always a challenge when the sport is not fully professional. The second is the quality of competition, which he said was the biggest reason for PKL's success. "We will present the best kabaddi in the world, to make it an example of world's best women's sports league when we do it."
Thirdly, the national federation began their work as recently as last year. Coach Tejaswini, captain Ritu and manager Pooja have all hailed the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India, who took up the reins in 2024 and they say the functioning has gotten better since. Indeed, they said that the World Cup happened after two postponements in 2025 itself because of the AKFI and IKF, which is headquartered in Rajasthan with Tejaswi Singh Gehlot as Director, highlighting India's role in global kabaddi.
Since then, the women's team has added an Asian Women's Kabaddi Championship gold to their 2023 Asian Games gold and now the 2025 World Cup in a sport that is diversifying globally with Chinese Taipei and Iran emerging with a game style different than the traditional Indian one. There have been national camps, fitness training and now public acknowledgement of victories.
Women's sport in India is rapidly growing in profile, visibility and success, and now is kabaddi's chance to be part of this movement. With India's influence in the sport, the growth of Indian women's kabaddi directly translates into the growth of the global game. And gender parity is the key tenet for any sport to be part of bigger global landscapes like the Olympics.
Unlike in 2012, the 2025 World Cup win should be the start of a new era for women's kabaddi.