India Won Both Titles at the First Commonwealth Kabaddi Championship in Ahmedabad, the Women Beating Uganda 35-15 and the Men Beating Sri Lanka 54-20 on 31 October 2026

India won both titles at the first Commonwealth Kabaddi Championship on 31 October 2026 at the Veer Savarkar Sports Complex in Ahmedabad. The women beat Uganda 35-15 in the final, and the men beat Sri Lanka 54-20 later the same night. The men won all eight of their matches and the women all six, so neither team lost a game in the nine-day event.

All India Radio, the Pro Kabaddi League’s match reports, ANI and IANS give the same two scores. The play-by-play figures below come from the league’s reports, which ANI and IANS reproduce almost word for word. AIR carries the results only.

Two gold medal matches, 7:30 and 9:00 on a Saturday night

The Pro Kabaddi League’s schedule put the women’s final at 7:30 pm Indian time and the men’s at 9:00 pm on Saturday 31 October. AIR reported the women’s result at 9:52 pm that evening and the men’s win the next morning. The championship ran from 23 to 31 October, with semi-finals on 30 October.

A short guide to the terms, taken from the Pro Kabaddi League’s rules explainer. Each team has seven players on court. A raider crosses into the other half, tags defenders and has to get back within 30 seconds, chanting “kabaddi” throughout. If the defence stops him, it scores a tackle point. A raider can also pick up a bonus point by crossing a marked line. When a side loses all its players on court, it concedes an All Out, which scores points for the opponents, and the whole side returns to the mat. The explainer describes the league’s rules. The championship’s own rulebook was not among the pages read for this article.

The men’s final: 30-10 at half-time

India led Sri Lanka 15-8 with ten minutes of the first half left, then outscored them 15-2 to lead 30-10 at the break after a second All Out. The second half went 24-10 to India, with two more All Outs.

Aditya Shinde scored a Super 10, meaning ten raid points, from 14 raids, four of them bonus points. Bharat Hooda added eight raid points, all in the second half, and was not tackled once in seven raids. Pankaj Mohite scored six and the vice-captain, Naveen Kumar, five. Yogesh Dahiya made a High 5, five tackle points from five attempts, all in the first half.

Over the match India made 24 successful raids from 40 and Sri Lanka seven from 41. India finished with 30 raid points and 14 tackle points, four All Outs, and none conceded. Dulan Maduwantha was Sri Lanka’s top scorer with six tackle points, two of them Super Tackles (a tackle by fewer than half the defenders on the mat, which the explainer says earns two points). Sri Lanka had reached the final by beating Kenya 28-24 in the second semi-final. The league’s report quotes Shinde saying the tournament was good for the people of Ahmedabad, who had backed the team.

The women’s final: 22-7 at the break

India’s women led Uganda 7-3 with ten minutes of the first half left, then won the next stretch 15-4, including an All Out, to go in at 22-7. In that half they did not lose a single raid, while Uganda failed on all nine of its tackle attempts.

Sakshi scored nine raid points from ten raids, two of them bonus points, and seven of the nine came in the first half. Anu added six raid points and the captain, Nidhi Sharma, five, three of them bonus points. Ritu and Suman made four tackle points each. India finished with 20 raid points, 10 tackle points and two All Outs.

Uganda’s Nakayongo Shirat carried the attack, scoring 11 of her side’s 15 points from 24 of its 35 raids. Uganda won the second half on raid points, 7-6, but India’s second All Out with under ten minutes left settled the match. According to the press release that ANI carried, Sakshi finished the championship with 52 points from six matches, and she thanked the federation for organising it. She said events like this would help the sport grow and give young players experience.

Eight wins and six wins: the road to the finals

The men played in Group A, seven teams who each met the others once. The Pro Kabaddi League’s results give India’s six group scores: England 46-26 on 23 October, Uganda 44-30, Malaysia 37-23, Nigeria 50-23, Tanzania 48-20, and Sri Lanka 45-24 on 29 October. AIR reported the England score on 24 October, and it also reported the women’s 73-13 win over Malaysia on the same opening day.

The semi-final on 30 October was 56-27 against Bangladesh, and India led 28-8 at half-time, according to Mykhel’s match report. Across the eight matches the men scored 380 points and conceded 193, and no opponent got past 30, the league and IANS report. Adding the eight scorelines gives the same totals.

The women were in a five-team Group A and played four group matches. They beat Malaysia 73-13, Singapore 32-16, Uganda 41-18 and Nigeria 38-10, then Sri Lanka 39-14 in the semi-final on 30 October. Uganda reached the final by beating Kenya 23-21 in the other semi-final. Adding the six scorelines gives 258 points for India and 86 against, a tuput calculation from the published scores.

The league’s medal table lists bronze as Bangladesh or Kenya for the men and Kenya or Sri Lanka for women, and its schedule shows no bronze match. The pages read for this article do not name bronze medallists, so none are named here.

Thirteen nations and 23 squads

The Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India (AKFI) organised the championship with the approval of the International Kabaddi Federation. Its release, carried by ANI on 22 October after a curtain-raiser press conference on Wednesday 21 October, gave the numbers: 13 nations, 23 squads, more than 400 athletes, and 62 matches, 39 for men and 23 for women. The release named the nations as India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Uganda, England, Scotland and Australia. ANI and the league’s site carried the release. The tournament theme was “One Breath. One Raid. One Commonwealth.”

AIR’s preview gives 13 men’s teams and ten women’s teams, which add up to the release’s 23 squads. AIR’s men’s group lists (seven teams and six) and the league’s women’s draw (two groups of five) account for the same 13 nations.

Some pre-tournament coverage gave a different count. Khel Now wrote that 14 nations would compete, listed Pakistan among them, and gave the dates as 21 to 31 October. Pakistan does not appear in the AKFI release, in AIR’s group lists or in any results table read for this article, and 21 October was the day of the curtain-raiser. The organiser’s figure, 13 nations, is the one used here.

Matches were broadcast on Star Sports and streamed on JioHotstar, and the release said entry to the venue was free with online registration.

Kabaddi and the 2030 Games

The release said the championship should strengthen kabaddi’s case for inclusion in the Commonwealth Games, which Ahmedabad hosts in 2030. The host city’s wider bid, the vote and the sports Commonwealth Sport has confirmed are covered in our piece on the 2030 Games. A month before the championship, India’s men beat Iran 40-34 for the Asian Games gold on 26 September and the women’s team also won gold, ANI reported, as set out in India’s 2026 Asian Games record.

Commonwealth Sport’s Amdavad 2030 page lists eight sports as confirmed from its programme review: athletics, swimming, table tennis, bowls, weightlifting and para powerlifting, artistic gymnastics, netball and boxing, each with its para version where one exists. It lists a further group under consideration, among them archery, cricket T20, hockey and wrestling, and says the host can propose up to two new or traditional sports. As of 2 November 2026 kabaddi is on neither list. The page gives the number of sports at Amdavad 2030 as 15 to 17.