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 (Marathi, Hindi: खो-खो, Bengali: খো-খো) is an Indian and Pakistani 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. Kho Kho and Kabaddi, in spite of popular misconception, are not the same.

Rules

• Each team consists of 12 players, but only 9 players take the field for a contest.
• 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 can only run in one direction and cannot cut across the sitters unlike the dodgers who can run randomly and in between the sitters.
• They have to run round the entire row to reach the other side.
• The other option is to pass the chasing job to another sitter whose back is facing the chaser as the chaser is running.
• In this option, the chaser touches the sitter he wants,usually nearest to the target and shouts "kho" to signify the change of guard.
• The objective is to tag all the opponents in the shortest time possible.
• The team that takes the shortest time to tag all the opponents in the field, wins.

Field

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. It is 29 meters in length and 16 meters in width. There are two rectangles at the end. One side of the rectangle is 16 meter 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.

Equipment

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.

Strategies, preparation, terminology

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.

Further reading

• Gupta, K.; Gupta, Amita, eds. (2006), Concise Encyclopaedia of India, 3, New Delhi: Atlantic, p. 986, ISBN 81-269-0639-1, http://books.google.com/books?id=9dNOT9iYxcMC 

External links

• http://library.thinkquest.org/11372/data/kho-kho1.htm
• http://khokho.org/
• http://mkkasso.com/Technical.htm