Kho kho

Kho kho

Boys in a Government School in Haryana, India playing kho-kho
Characteristics
Team members 12 players per side. 9 in the field

Kho kho is a tag sport played by teams of twelve players who try to avoid being touched by members of the opposing team, only 9 players of the team enter the field.[1] It is one of the two most popular traditional tag games of the Indian subcontinent, the other being kabbadi.[2] Apart from the Subcontinent, it is also played in South Africa.[3]

History

Asian Kho Kho Federation was established in the year 1987 during 3rd SAF Games, held at Kolkata, India. The member countries were India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives. The first Asian championship was held at Kolkata in 1996 and the second championship at at Dhaka in Bangladesh. India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Japan, Thailand and Bangladesh were participants of the championship.

Rules

Each team consists of 12 players, but only 9 players take the field. A match consists of two innings with each inning consisting of chasing and running turns of 9 minutes each. One team sits/kneels in the middle of the court, in a row, with adjacent members facing opposite directions. The runners take to the field, 3 at a time and the team that takes the shortest time to tag/tap all the opponents in the field, wins. There is a pole on each end and the runner can go between two players who are sitting in zig zag manner, but the chaser is not allowed to turn back while running and go between the players. But chaser can go to pole and touch it and can go back or go to other side.

Schematic representation of a kho-kho pitch

A kho kho playground (or pitch) is rectangular.[4] It is 29 meters in length and 16 metres in width. There are two rectangles at the end. Length of the rectangle is 16 metre and the width is 2.75 meters. In the middle of these two rectangles, there are two wooden poles. The central lane is 23.5 meters long and 30 cm width. There are eight cross lanes which lie across central lane, length of the cross lanes, are 16  meters and width 30  cm. It makes the small rectangles and each of it is 16  meters in length and 2.3 meters in breadth,(the two rectangles of near by the wooden poles are 2.5   meters width) at right angles to the central lane and divided equally into two parts of 7.85 meters each by central lane. At the end of central lane, the free zone tangent to the post-line, two smooth wooden posts are fixed, 120 cm height from the ground and their circumference is not less than 30 cm and not more than 40 cm.

The equipment used in kho kho are poles/post, strings, metallic measuring tape, lime powder, wire nails, two watches, types of rings having inner circumference of 30 cm and 40 cm, score shots (like a whistle, for instance), and stationery to write results. [5]

References

  1. ↑ "Tripura KHO KHO Association @ Tripura4u". Retrieved 28 March 2011.
  2. ↑ Peter A. Hastie (1 July 2010). Student-Designed Games: Strategies for Promoting Creativity, Cooperation, and Skill Development. Human Kinetics. pp. 52–. ISBN 978-0-7360-8590-8. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  3. ↑ A trip through SA's indigenous games. sowetanlive.co.za 14 March 2012.
  4. ↑ "Kho Kho Field". WebIndia123.
  5. ↑ "Equipment". Sports.Indiapress.org.

Further reading

External links