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The 2025 Kho Kho World Cup got rolling on Sunday with some chaos, plenty of dancing, an ‘I love you’ and sky-high dreams.
Snippets from the 2025 Kho Kho World Cup’s Media Day on Sunday. (Photo: News18)
It’s official. On January 12, 2025, at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in New Delhi, straight through Gate 22 and then a couple of hundred meters to the left, Kho Kho ceased to be a game. It’s now a sport. An ambitious one. With dreams as big as the world can contain.
“This sport has agility, speed and tactics, everything needed for a top sport,” roared Sudhanshu Mittal, the Kho Kho Federation of India chief, from the dais. “Our target is the Olympics 2032. You all must work hard to make this game part of the Asian Games 2030.”
And he received a huge cheer in return. From men belonging to 20 countries and women to 19. Six continents draped in different colors of jerseys combined to do bhangra to the tunes of Chak De India, Rang de Basanti, DJ Bravo’s Champion and Waka Waka.
Labeled simply as a ‘media day’ ahead of the first men’s match of the inaugural Kho Kho World Cup between India and Nepal on Monday, the event was a festival in itself. Dhols and dancers greeted the athletes, both men’s and women’s trophies laid there for everyone to take a close look and admire.
The event started with music and video presentations about the tournament, the teams, the apps made for the event, and so on. Some groups made stylish entries and the competition began — already — with who could cheer louder when their captains were called up.
After they had opened the stage, the hosts found it hard to control the chaos. But they didn’t seem to mind it. “This is so amazing, I can’t believe it, this is the power of the World Cup, I love you all,” one of them shouted into the mic.
Soon, they realised that way too many participants had climbed up with their respective flags on the stage and the rest of the time was spent requesting them to come down to avoid any safety concerns. Most of them did but not before juggling the mic and chanting their team’s names.
“It feels very good,” India women’s Kho Kho player Neeta Devi told News18 amidst the fun. “We’ll get to meet and play against people from so many different countries.”
“This tournament will have a big impact,” she added. “Kho Kho is getting its own World Cup…Until now, people used to ask us, ‘What do you do, what game do you play?’ and when we’d reply Kho Kho, they made faces and ask questions. Now, this being a World Cup, our seniors and all of us will get chances and we can tell them what we have achieved.”
Devi, 26, was born in Himachal Pradesh but has been playing Kho Kho for 15 years for Punjab. She hopes to earn recognition and a government job once the tournament is done and dusted.
Similar is the story of most Indian players. Despite the limited recognition, Kho Kho still has enough tournaments in India to help athletes get by financially.
Other athletes though don’t have the luxury.
“I have been playing football for a lot of my life,” Australia’s Lucas Sena, 40, who lives in Canberra, said. “We found out in 2019 about the tournament. It didn’t happen [in 2022]. But since then, we’ve been training two times a week. Most of us have full-time jobs as well so we need to manage our professional lives — some of us are students — alongside training for Kho Kho.”
Apart from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Kho Kho made its entry in into the majority of other participant nations after the World Cup.
Most non-subcontinent countries brought players with sporting backgrounds who had either grown up playing similar sports to Kho Kho as kids — like Ghana — or found similarities with their primary sports in it.
“A lot of us have played a lot of field hockey and some of us have played rugby before. A couple of my friends and I are cyclists and long-distance runners,” JW, 35, from the Netherlands team, said. “In the last couple of months we have trained in Kho Kho and the experience has just been about team building because it’s a real team sport. And that has been a great experience. The main learning for us starting is the technical part of the game — combining the rules with tactics, which requires a longer journey than six months.”
Henrique Mazzola, 28, from Brazil, adds: “We started practicing five months ago. We just knew the sport’s name but now we like it so much. We usually play football, so the change of directions and things like that are very similar.”
The similarities don’t end there. Most of these athletes’ coaches were approached around a couple of years ago by Rohit Haldania, General Secretary & World Cup Organising Committee – International Kho Kho Federation (IKKF), and his colleagues.
These men organised practice sessions, and arranged training facilities and everything around the sport, leaving the playing part for the athletes. The IKKF also organised camps for the coaches, who then went back to schools and colleges to gather players, train them, run trials and bring them here.
Connor Couchot, 29, who worked in Bengaluru some time ago, and plays football (soccer) in the USA, admitted that until a few weeks ago, Kho Kho was like a rule book to him, and that he saw a new world when an Indian national-level player revealed a few basic tactics. For Poland’s 20-year-old Karolina, whatever she has learned about Kho Kho is through YouTube.
So it’s understandable that the goals that these players have come up with are as varied as their nations. While South Africa’s Bongani Mtsweni, 25, only sees India and Nepal as the threat and doesn’t want to go back without the trophy, Australia’s Sena said he’d be happy if his team beats England in their first game and enjoy the rest of their time.
The Dutch runner, JW, thinks surviving till the knockout round – i.e. finishing in the top two of his group that consists of South Africa, Ghana, Argentina and Iran – is a ‘fair’ ambition. Brazil’s Mazzola wants to match the level of the sides ‘with the same experience’.
“To reach the final!” Poland’s Konrad declares when asked the same question.
And he quickly received a sarcastic “Yes, of course!” from Karolina, who was sitting next to him.
“It’s a tough group for us. We have Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in our group who have been playing for a long time. We have been playing for three months. It’s impossible for us to try and beat them. But we’ll try,” Konrad added.
However – the joint dance and celebration were only the first reminders – when a game matures into a sport, it starts to supersede competition, titles, and other tangible rewards and it takes all its participants on the ride with it.
“I was on the national team for running,” Konrad added ruefully. “I decided to leave the team because of an injury. After five years, it’s a big, amazing opportunity to come back for the national team. It’s a new journey.”
The IKKF didn’t just take Kho Kho to different corners of the world, it took hampers labeled ‘lifetime opportunity to represent your country’. It was something they probably couldn’t have done in their primary sports or professions. It was too good a chance to let go.
“It means everything,” Couchot said. “Putting on the red, white and blue is something everyone has always dreamed of as a kid. So being able to represent the United States is just one of the biggest goals and happiest events of my life.”
Dreaming for 2032
Is it sustainable though? Kho Kho might be a sport boasting of a world cup tournament now but achieving “global appeal’ is a completely different piranha to fry.
Ask the International Cricket Council (ICC), they know a lot about running a sport with resources and interest lopsided towards a handful of nations. It took cricket more than 50 years since its first World Cup to get back into the Olympics. For Kho Kho to do it inside seven years, even with the advantage of not needing special grounds or logistics, the IKKF would require plenty of lobbying, effort, and most importantly, hope that the world loves the sport as much as India.
So far, though, it seems like they have hit the jackpot.
“I am a teacher, I’ll go and teach my kids how to play Kho Kho in Brazil,” Matheus Vinicius Costa, 26, said.
Couchot added, “We have fallen in love with the game so we want more people to be able to do the same. We have started an Instagram, a non-profit, so we are hoping that that gains traction. That way we can bring more youth in America, some of the kids in school. That way we can get more people involved.”
JW said: “In the Netherlands, it has been getting quite a bit of attention. We have been on multiple radio stations, and television channels have come and visited our training sessions, throughout the tournament we are also having interviews with people in the Netherlands. Whereas a couple of months ago, people in the Netherlands had not heard of the game of Kho Kho before. The news has been picked up quite well even in the traditional media.”
“I am 100% sure it’s going to help a lot of people back in Australia, watching and supporting. I have been receiving messages. It has been on the news around Australia as well. We have seen family and friends trying to practice it. All these people will go back to their countries and talk about Kho Kho so it’s absolutely amazing,” Sena chimes in.
Kho Kho’s dreams are humongous and achieving them will probably be preceded by more obstacles than it perhaps realises yet.
But every athlete, manager, organiser, photographer, and intern that was present at the arena on Sunday, carried a cool draft of optimism. Chaotic, yes, but Kho Kho’s heart seems to be at the right place. And that’s as good a start as can be.