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 KABADDI: FROM INTUITIVE TO QUANTITATIVE APPROACH FOR
ANALYSIS & PREDICTIONS

Manojkumar Somabhai Parmar

Student, EGMP-43
Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India
manojkumar.parmar17@iimb.ac.in; parmarmanojkumar@gmail.com

Abstract
Kabaddi is a contact team sport with origin in India. It is a highly strategic game which generates
a significant amount of data due to its rules. Nevertheless, data generated from Kabaddi has been
unused, and coaches & players rely heavily on intuitions to make decisions. This paper provides a
quantitative perspective on kabaddi. The research derives outlook from an analysis performed on
data from "3rd standard style kabaddi world cup" tournament 2016. Dataset was manually curated
which consists of 66 entries over 31 variables from 33 matches. This paper discusses and provides
a quantitative explanation of traditional strategies and conceptions related to kabaddi like attack &
defense strategies. Multiple hypotheses are built and validated using student’s t-test. This paper
further discusses and provides a quantitative approach to profile an entire tournament to understand
a generalized area of strengths of multiple teams. Additionally, an individual team specific
profiling, through hypotheses testing and its visualizations, is presented to gain a deeper
understanding of team’s behavior and its performance. This paper also provides multiple models
to forecast the winner. The model building includes automatic feature selection techniques and
variable importance analysis techniques. Generalised linear model with & without an elastic net,
recursive partitioning and regression tree, conditional inference tree, random forest, support vector
machine (linear and radial) and neural network-based models are built and presented. Ensemble
models use generalized linear model and random forest model techniques as ensemble method to
combine outcome of a generalized linear model with the elastic net, random forest, and neural
network-based models. The research discusses the comparison between models and their
performance parameters. Research also suggests that ensemble technique is not able to boost up
accuracy. Models achieve 91.67%-100% accuracy on cross-validation dataset and 78.57%-100%
on test set. Results presented can be used to design in-game real-time winning predictions to
improve decision-making. Results presented can be used to design agent and environments to train
artificial intelligence via reinforced learning model.

Keywords: Kabaddi, Sports Analytics, Predictive Model, Team Profiling.

1. Introduction

Kabaddi is originated in India and has traveled to other countries in the region. It is a team contact
sport with the uniqueness that, entire defending team defends against an attacking player from
opposition team. Majority of Indian either knows or plays kabaddi (Sen, 2015), but the use of
technology was considerably non-existent. Recently, due to commercialization (“The hindu
business line,” 2014), technology in its infancy have penetrated the kabaddi. Kabaddi produces
data which is under-utilized today and in the best form used for showing descriptive statistics.
Traditionally, intuitive feelings drive decision-making in Kabaddi. This research aims at
converting “What we think” to “What we know” approach, famously argued by Sam Allardyce
(Devenport, 2014). The research investigates claims and strategies of kabaddi and uses hypotheses
testing to validate them. These hypotheses validation starts at the entire tournament level, and later
team level granularity is introduced. Hypotheses validation across team provides essential insight
like strength and strategy of the team. Based on a proven foundation, this research starts venturing
into predictive modeling of the game outcome using supervised learning method. Ensembling
technique is used to make predictive models robust however results are not promising. Results
from predictive models are highly satisfactory with demonstrated 100 % prediction accuracies.
Literature survey, research method, dataset preparation, descriptive statistics, hypothesis
validation, model building and discussion of results, form seven sections of the paper. Literature
survey discusses state of the art for kabaddi sports analytics. Research method & dataset
preparation discusses the data generation and curation along with research method used.
Descriptive statistics provide a detailed understanding of dataset via numbers and visualizations.
Hypothesis validation investigates common strategies and claims of kabaddi. Model building
forms the core of research and provides a detailed discussion of predictive models and their
accuracy. Discussion of results comprises of prospects of research findings along with its possible
applications.

2. Literature survey
Sports diversity in India is growing, and also the monetary values attached to it (Gupta, 2009).
India has started witnessing the rise of professional sports with various successful leagues(Sanjeev
and Ankur, 2015). Sports is all about decision-making on the field and off the field considering
multiple parameters. Kabaddi, as a sport, is not so different. Kabaddi can benefit from analytics as
it produces a variety of data at a team level and an individual player level. Devenport (2014) in his
comprehensive article provides three significant type of analytics for sports. Player’s injury &
health analytics to predict their readiness and fitness for a game; business analytics to leverage
business aspects of the game; player & game performance analytics to help predict individual and
game outcomes. All three types of analytics are necessary for professional sports.
Player's injury and health indicators are measured meticulously, and various studies try to leverage
this information. The research by De, Dasgupta, Panda, and Bhattacharya (1982) is part of earliest
effort to test the physical efficiency of a male player and then relate it to their health. The research
by Khanna, Majumdar, Malik, Vrinda, and Mandal (1996) is another study to measure
physiological responses of players during the game to deepen understanding of player health.
Additionally, specific injuries like knee injury (Dhillon, 2017) of players and most common
injuries (Murthy, 2016) are a subject of research. These studies also provide probable causes for
injuries. There is a need to bring fragmented research on player’s injury and health together to
consolidate learning and present a unique health and injury analytics for kabaddi players, coach,
and team management.
Business analytics, which includes fan programmes and engagement, dynamic ticket pricing, and
marketing optimisation, is not an exclusive focus of researchers. The research by Sanjeev and
Ankur (2015) on a topic of “Constituents of Successful Sports Leagues in Emerging Markets,”
discusses aspects of fan engagement and celebrity endorsement for kabaddi at surface level.
In the game of Kabaddi, player performance is a crucial indicator of the success of a team. Studies
have tried to correlate player performance based on fitness (Pandey and Sardar, 2016), cognitive
abilities (Kaur and Sharma, 2013), and body structure (Sudhakar, Majumdar, Umesh and Panda,
2014). Player performance determination remains an area for further research. Additionally,
detailed literature survey highlights that no substantial research is available concerning game
performance. For a game of kabaddi, game performance and game outcome predictions are a new
area to explore The method to analyze kabaddi matches is already proposed (Palraj, Needhiraja,
John and Kalidasan, 2012) but did not attract further attention.
Analytics are visibly reshaping how sports are played (Dizikes, 2013) by helping a player to
understand their weaknesses and strength, by assisting the coach in deciding strategies and backing
their intuitions and by helping team management to optimise cost. Sports analytics is thriving today
due to the demonstration of its impact by practitioners and groups who believed in it. Sports
analytics is becoming the new standard and continually changing operational and strategical
aspects of many games. Literature review points out, in general, lack of application of sports
analytics in the field of kabaddi. The motivation of research paper is to demonstrate that sports
analytics can be applied to games like kabaddi where no significant effort is put forward either by
researchers or by practitioners. This research paper focuses on aspects of game performance
analytics. Proprietary sports statistics may not help sports analytics movement in general (Dizikes,
2013) and this is another principal motivation for publishing research on kabaddi sports analytics.

3. Research method
The research objective is to build the predictive model about a game outcome and also validate
claims and strategies. Research methodology consists of curating dataset and then performing a
variety of analytics on it to provide insights. Dataset is processed to produce a descriptive statistical
summary along with visualization to improve understanding of dataset. Multiple hypotheses are
validated using parametric hypothesis test. The predictive model building includes deriving
multiple models and later choosing them based on performance parameters. The research method
applied here is the most common method employed by analytics practitioners.

4. Dataset preparation
Data and dataset preparation is critical as it forms the core of analytics. Dataset is prepared by
collecting raw information and then applying processing techniques to make them relevant for
research. For kabaddi analytics, data is consolidated by manually scraping the website of “3rd
standard style kabaddi world cup” tournament. Post processed dataset consists of 66 entries over
31 variables from 33 matches. Curated dataset along with its codebook, which describes variables
and its properties, are published on kaggle platform (Parmar, 2016). Dataset has received
“featured” status on kaggle platform as it is a first dataset published for kabaddi. Variables of
dataset represent attack and defense points acquired by teams as per standard kabaddi rules like
tackle points, raid points, bonus points, allout points, touch points, total points and other points.
Variables representing relative differences in points for tackle, touch, raid, bonus, total, and allout
maneuvers are calculated in a post-processing phase. Dataset also captures results of a game,
results of toss and game stage of the league. This dataset is complete and consistent which sharpens
further analytics.
5. Descriptive analytics
Descriptive analytics is the primitive forms of analysis which utilize past data to provide insight.
Descriptive statistics and data visualization are fundamental elements of descriptive analytics
(Dinesh Kumar, 2017) to provide an innovative way to summarise data.

Figure 1: Violin plots of team performances

Descriptive statistics of location measures (mean, median) and dispersion measures (standard
deviation, mean absolute deviation, range, skew, kurtosis, standard error, and interquartile range)
of the essential variables is available in Table 1. Variables capturing relative difference have mean,
median and skew parameters as zero due to symmetry. The observed distribution of all variables
is platykurtic with a positive skew. The descriptive summary provides surface level insights like
every team observes on an average one allout per match and two super tackle per three matches.
Additionally, a team receives 18 touch points, five bonus points, 11 tackle points, four allout
points, and two extra points in a game totaling to 41 points. Team-wise information is necessary
to deepen understanding of team performance. Team-wise details are shown using violin plots in
figure 1, which are built using box plots and density plot to provide complete information about
given variable (Hintze and Nelson, 1998). Visualization is a powerful tool to get insights. Analysis
of figure 1 presents some critical information like a defense of Kenya is the best among teams and
attack of India is the best. Based on average of total points, India has scored the highest followed
by Bangladesh and South Korea, making India the highly seasoned team. Figure 2 provides with
match results considering total points and toss results. Analysis of figure 2 demonstrates that there
is no impact of toss result on winning team and total points scored, hence rendering toss results
useless in deciding the game outcome. Descriptive analytics provides necessary insights into the
performance of game at the aggregate level and at the team level. It also helps in building predictive
models by providing dependent variable characteristics.

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of essential variables

Variables n mean sd median mad min max range skew kurtosis se IQR

alloutRec 66 2.03 2.14 1 1.48 0.00 7.00 7.00 0.69 -0.95 0.26 4.00
sTackleRec 66 0.65 1.36 0 0.00 0.00 9.00 9.00 3.78 18.88 0.17 1.00

touchPntsRec 66 17.85 9.17 15.5 9.64 1.00 37.00 36.00 0.36 -0.88 1.13 14.75
bonusPntsRec 66 5.47 3.03 5 2.97 0.00 16.00 16.00 0.81 0.90 0.37 3.75

raidPntsRec 66 23.32 10.58 20.5 11.12 1.00 43.00 42.00 0.33 -0.96 1.30 16.50

tacklePntsRec 66 10.64 6.24 11 7.41 0.00 28.00 28.00 0.44 -0.30 0.77 8.00

alloutPntsRec 66 4.06 4.28 2 2.97 0.00 14.00 14.00 0.69 -0.95 0.53 8.00

extraPntsRec 66 2.45 2.01 2 1.48 0.00 8.00 8.00 0.75 -0.37 0.25 3.00

totalPntsRec 66 40.47 19.49 34 20.76 8.00 80.00 72.00 0.45 -1.17 2.40 30.50
touchPntsDiff 66 0.00 15.18 0 19.27 -33.00 33.00 66.00 0.00 -0.93 1.87 25.50

bonusPntsDiff 66 0.00 3.79 0 4.45 -9.00 9.00 18.00 0.00 -0.22 0.47 6.00

raidPntsDiff 66 0.00 17.32 0 20.76 -42.00 42.00 84.00 0.00 -0.67 2.13 27.50

tacklePntsDiff 66 0.00 10.37 0 11.86 -21.00 21.00 42.00 0.00 -1.00 1.28 15.50

alloutPntsDiff 66 0.00 7.86 0 11.86 -14.00 14.00 28.00 0.00 -1.31 0.97 16.00

extraPntsDiff 66 0.00 3.00 0 2.97 -7.00 7.00 14.00 0.00 -0.29 0.37 4.00

totalPntsDiff 66 0.00 35.66 0 50.41 -72.00 72.00 144.00 0.00 -1.19 4.39 68.00

Figure 2: Results of match outcome based on total points and toss results
6. Hypotheses validation
Humans are very efficient at finding the pattern and then codifying this knowledge by converting
it to thumb rules. The process of learning is lengthy and slow in nature and also subjected to biases.
Majority decisions of kabaddi game, on the field and off the field, are based on traditional wisdom
passed in the form of thumb rules from generations of coaches and players. This research aims at
investigating some of the known thumb rules and then validating them using the statistical
framework of hypothesis testing. Hypothesis testing is performed using student’s t-test for the
small dataset (De Winter, 2013).
Discussion with coaches, players, and journalist points to four fundamental thumb rules used in
decision making.
 Attack is better than defense
 Defense is better than extra
 Defense is better than allout
 Allout is better than extra
For validation of thumb rules, research derives hypotheses, and testing results of same are available
in table 2. Hypotheses testing uses single sided (higher than) student’s t-test with a paired sample
having unknown variance. It is clear from results of hypotheses testing that there is no statistical
evidence present to refute the thumb rules even with the stringent confidence interval of 99.99%.
Based on results, decision making can be generalized in a simple way using priority order. Priority
of attack is highest followed by defense, allout and extra. This statistically proven rule can be
helpful in deciding strategies to be used.

Table 2: Four key hypotheses validation results

Thumb Rule Null Hypothesis Alternate Hypothesis p-Value Result

Attack is Raid points of winning Raid points of winning team 8.276554e-11 Null Hypothesis
better than team is same as is higher than defense points Rejected with > 99.99%
defense defense points of confidence interval

Defense is Defense points of Defense points of winning 3.907370e-14 Null Hypothesis

better than winning team is same team is higher than extra Rejected with > 99.99%
extra as extra points points of confidence interval

Defense is Defense points of Defense points of winning 5.186462e-11 Null Hypothesis

better than winning team is same team is higher than allout Rejected with > 99.99%
allout as allout points points of confidence interval

Allout is Allout points of Allout points of winning 7.408993e-08 Null Hypothesis

better than winning team is same team is higher than extra Rejected with > 99.99%
extra as extra points points of confidence interval

These type of hypotheses testing is further extended to understand team wise application of thumb
rules. Results of hypotheses testing for each team along with aggregate are presented graphically
in figure 3 with 95% confidence interval. The observation of figure 3 yields that Argentina,
Bangladesh, India, Iran, Korea, Poland, and Thailand follow the thumb rule of “attack is better
than the defense.” However same thumb rule might not be followed by Australia, England, Japan,
Kenya, and the USA. Interestingly, India follows all thumb rules, but Australia follows none.
Hypothesis visualization is a powerful technique, to understand the working mechanism and
deeply held beliefs of teams which helps in developing a game plan and strategy.

Figure 3: Team-wise hypotheses validation results with 95% confidence interval

7. Model building
Models predict the binary game outcome as either loss or win by processing selected features using
supervised learning method. Model building is an iterative process which considers robustness and
accuracy improvement as prime measures during the development phase.
Before kick-starting model building process, research divides data into three parts. Dataset is split
into ~60% (40 samples) of training data to train and build a model, ~20% (12 samples) of cross-
validation data to improve and tune model, and ~20% (14 samples) of test data to check the final
accuracy and robustness of the model. Understanding of variables and its features in the dataset is
an essential first task in building models which is widely known as feature engineering. Feature
engineering helps in identifying predictor variables to improve the performance of models. It is a
demanding process involving a more profound understanding of data and also the domain. Feature
engineering method can be automated in a limited way with the help of RFE – recursive feature
elimination algorithm(Shen, Ong, Li, Hui, and Wilder-Smith, 2007) which uses backward feature
selection process (Guyon and Elisseeff, 2003). RFE algorithm uses random forest helper functions
along with five times repeated cross-validation over 20 random samples. Research restricts set of
input features for RFE to 21 variables excluding total points, total points difference, match stage,
toss results, and count of allouts. Total points and total point difference are apparent predictors of
game outcome and can introduce heavy bias. Match stage and toss results have no impact on the
game outcome. Allout points are representative of allout counts. RFE, from the available set of
variables, provides the optimal set of 8 variables as best fit. However only top 5 predictors,
touchPntsDiff, raidPntsDiff, alloutPntsDiff, tacklePntsDiff, and alloutPntsRec, are used to build
various models.

Table 3: Performance measures (%) of models over cross-validation dataset and test dataset
Cross-validation dataset (12 samples) Test dataset (14 samples)

Model Accuracy Sensitivity Specificity F1 Score Accuracy Sensitivity Specificity F1 Score

glm 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

glmnet 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

rpart 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 78.57 100.00 57.14 82.35

ctree 91.67 1.00 83.33 92.30 92.86 100.00 85.71 93.33

rf 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 78.57 100.00 57.14 82.35

svmLinear 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

svmLinear2 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

svmLinear3 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

svmRadial 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

nnet 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

In total ten pure models are built using logistic regression-based algorithms, tree-based algorithms,
support vector machine-based algorithms and neural network-based algorithms. Logistic
regression based models include general linear model (glm), and a generalized linear model with
an elastic net (glmnet). Tree-based models include recursive partitioning and regression trees
(rpart), conditional inference tree (ctree), and random forest (rf). Support vector machine based
models include support vector machine with linear kernel (two type of implementation; svmLinear,
svmLinear2), regularised support vector machine with a dual linear kernel (svmLinear3), and
support vector machine with radial basis kernel function (svmRadial). Neural network-based
model includes a single hidden layer feed-forward neural network (nnet). Pure models
performances regarding accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and F1 score are available in table 3 for
cross-validation dataset and test dataset (Powers, 2011; Caruana and Niculescu-Mizil, 2006). From
table 3, it is clear that rpart and rf exhibit overfitting. The accuracy of ctree is the lowest but does
not display symptoms of overfitting. Remaining all models provide perfect accuracy of 100% over
cross-validation dataset and test dataset.
Despite similar performances, it is necessary to understand the decision-making process of these
models. The importance of variables in the context of the model provides the necessary
understanding of decision-making process (Grömping, 2009; Nathans, Oswald, and Nimon, 2012)
and table 4 depicts it. The accuracy of ctree is lowest despite the same importance of variables for
support vector machine based models. The difference in processing of variables by the respective
algorithm is the primary cause of different accuracies. The glm and glmnet have an entirely
different order of importance despite using same logistic regression-based techniques. It is due to
the presence of the regularisation mechanism in glmnet. It is clear that various model treats
variables differently and hence there is a possibility of overfitting for a given model which is
difficult to discover in this small dataset.

Table 4 : Relative variable importance (%) for ten base learners

Variables
Models touchPntsDiff raidPntsDiff alloutPntsDiff tacklePntsDiff alloutPntsRec
glm 5.59 100.00 0.00 52.22 27.78
rpart 49.49 0.00 73.54 1.80 100.00
ctree 100.00 79.31 86.21 0.00 10.34
rf 100.00 58.94 49.80 9.23 0.00
svmLinear 100.00 79.31 86.21 0.00 10.34
svmLinear2 100.00 79.31 86.21 0.00 10.34
svmLinear3 100.00 79.31 86.21 0.00 10.34
svmRadial 100.00 79.31 86.21 0.00 10.34
nnet 71.26 100.00 39.13 89.77 0.00
glmnet 10.92 55.16 67.62 0.00 100.00

Ensemble mechanism is a technique used to combine multiple models, referred as base learners,
to improve the performance of overall predictions (Dietterich, 2000; Kotsiantis, Zaharakis, and
Pintelas, 2006). Variation in the importance of variables for a set of base learning models is a
dominant criterion used for selection of base learners. These base learners are combined using rf
and glm as ensemble operator. Base learners considered for ensemble are rf, nnet, and glmnet.
Ensemble operator rf favors base learner glmnet (100%), followed by rf (42.21%), and discards
nnet (0%) entirely in the decision-making process. Ensemble operator glm behaves in complete
contrast to that of rf and heavily favors base learner nnet (100%), followed by glmnet (3.36%), and
ends up discarding rf (0%) entirely. Ensemble models performance is same as that of their heavily
favored base learners and hence failed to demonstrate any performance boost. Ensemble method
with rf operator is preferred, as it reflects the outcome of at least two models in the decision-
making process. Pure model nnet is preferred, as its importance of variable matches the results of
hypotheses validation.

8. Discussion of results
The results of visualization, hypotheses testing, and predictive model building are quite
encouraging. Before generalizing interpretation of results, caution needs to be exercised as results
can suffer from extreme biases induced by small sample sizes. Despite this limitation, techniques
and methods used for research can be generalized.
Violin plot discussed as part of descriptive analytics is a useful tool to visualize the behavior of
teams in a comprehensive way. Granular information provided in violin plot can be used to
characterize a team which is particularly helpful in devising winning strategies
Hypotheses testing results reinforce common prevailing wisdom and provide statistical backing
for it. It also highlights an important but expected aspect that, thumb rules of kabaddi reflects that
of the Indian team. At aggregate level hypotheses are withstanding even without consideration of
Indian team's performance. All the other team demonstrates statistical backing for a maximum of
three thumb rules. Visualization technique demonstrated in hypothesis testing results can be
combined with violin plots to understand and codify the real characteristics of any given team.
Combined visualization is beneficial for coach and team management as it can assist in deciding
strategies and line up for a game.
Predictive models, presented in research, are helpful in predicting game outcome in real time with
partial data available. Discussed models use only five simple dependent variables and provide very
high accuracy, making them a potential candidate to consider for deployment. Despite accuracies,
models need to prove their validity and robustness in real life before deployment.
Ensemble models and neural network-based models provide superior accuracies, but they are
difficult to interpret. Interpretability limits their application only to predict game outcomes and
does not help in devising strategies. For devising strategies, coefficients of glmnet can be helpful.
These coefficients provide the quantitative impact and correlation of each dependent variable on
the game outcome. Coaches and players can easily interpret them and then devise strategies and
scenarios.
Ensemble models & neural network-based models can help in testing the impact of strategies in
various game scenarios. Scenario-based testing can assist the coach in training players for
eventualities. Preparing all scenarios is a difficult task for coaches and players. The solution to this
problem exists in reinforced learning models. In reinforced learning models, agents act on the
environment in an intelligent and in a self-learned way to maximise given objective over a period.
Reinforced learning needs an environment which can be achieved by game modeling with standard
kabaddi rules. It also needs intelligent agents which can be modeled using discussed predictive
models. In the process of learning, agents develop artificial intelligence to play and win at games
of kabaddi. Agents can derive and devise optimal strategies for all scenarios. Artificial intelligence
can open up a new dimension of unique game strategies. In an idealized world, reinforced learning
mechanism can offset the role of a coach if not replaced.
Presented research and its findings have far-reaching implications for the game of kabaddi. The
study offers a new and unique way to look kabaddi from the quantitative perspective. This paper
also paves a road for further research to transform the game of kabaddi using analytics.

9. Conclusions
Kabaddi is considered a native Indian game with devoid of technology. The research aims at
breaking this stereotype and provides evidence that kabaddi can benefit from applying analytics.
Research method and its findings are cutting edge and has potential to change future of the game.
Detailed and dedicated research is necessary to deepen understanding of the game and to extract
benefits further. Predictive models combined with hypotheses and visualization are the essential
takeaways from the study.

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