Kho kho

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Kho kho
Kho Kho game at a Government school in Haryana, India.jpg
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 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 South Asia, the other being Kabbadi.[2] Apart from South Asia (mainly India and Pakistan), it is also played in South Africa.[3]

Contents

Rules[edit]

  • Each team consists of 12 players, but only 9 players take the field for a contest.[4]
  • A match consists of two innings. An innings consists of chasing and running turns of 9 minutes each.
  • Then, 1 team sits/kneels in the middle of the court, in a row, with adjacent members facing opposite directions.
  • The chasers ends in the shortest time possible.
  • The team that takes the shortest time to tag all the opponents in the field, wins.

Field[edit]

Schematic representation of a Kho-kho pitch (field). White lines are the markers, black circles are wooden poles (~ 4 feet tall), yellow arrows are chasing team members (facing as the arrow-heads are), blue smiley faces are the defenders (arrive in batches of 3).

A Kho-Kho playground(or pitch) is rectangular.[5] It is 29 meters in length and 16 metres in width. There are two rectangles at the end. One side of the rectangle is 16 metre and the other side is 2.75 meters. In the middle of these two rectangles, there are two wooden poles. The central lane is 907.50 cm long and 30 cm X 30 cm on the lane. There are eight cross lanes which lie across the small squares and each of it is 500 cm in length and 70 cm in breadth, at right angles to the central lane and divided equally into two parts of 7.30 cm each by central lane. At the end of central lane, two posts are fixed. They are 120 cm above the ground and their circumference is not less than 30 cm and not more than 40 cm. The post is made of wooden poles which are smooth all over. The posts are fixed firmly in the free zone tangent to the post-line at a height between 120 to 125 cm.

Such a game of skill, strength and extreme elegance coupled with tremendous requirement of tenacity and stamina is a Grand Indian Game of Chase.

Equipment[edit]

The equipment used in Kho Kho are posts, strings, metallic measuring tape, lime powder, wire nails, two watches, two types of rings having inner circumference of 30 cm and 40 cm, score shots (like a whistle, for instance), and some stationery to write results etc.. [6]

Strategies, preparation, terminology[edit]

Kho-kho is an extremely complicated and tactical sport.[citation needed] The matters of terminology, how to craft strategies and prepare players are detailed in the official Kho Kho website.[7]

References[edit]

  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
  4. ^ "NAV MAHARASHTRA SANGH, Pune Kho Kho". 
  5. ^ "KHO KHO FIELD". 
  6. ^ "Equipment". 
  7. ^ "Kho Kho: Game of Chase". Retrieved 07-02-2011. 

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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