PKL Season 7 | Pro Kabaddi League to begin from July 20 with 12 teams
The much-anticipated seventh season of the Pro Kabaddi League has been announced to begin from July 20. Among the new faces who are widely expected to run the show are Nitesh Kumar, Surender Singh, Rohit Gulia, and more after Siddharth Desai surprisingly came into the limelight last season.
Amidst the enormously successful Indian Premier League and heavily funded Indian Super League, Pro Kabaddi has been an ideal example of how the franchise sport took a rural sport to the top. PKL have had six seasons so far, and not a single of them has seen a major drop in viewership yet.
After Bengaluru Bulls lifted their maiden PKL title on January 5 by beating Gujarat Fortunegiants, the anticipation was already high for the next season and the huge response to the auctions clearly reflected it. And the league is back in less than six months.
"India's biggest kabaddi league is all set for a milestone Season VII, as it returns to the July – October window in the country's annual sports calendar. To improve the overall experience for spectators and television viewers, Season VII will commence each of its city-legs on Saturdays and matches will begin at 7:30 pm throughout,” said Anupam Goswami, CEO, Mashal Sports Pvt Ltd and League Commissioner, VIVO Pro Kabaddi, reported PKL website.
"We take pride in the way all our stakeholders and partners, particularly VIVO Pro Kabaddi franchises and the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India, are collectively engaged in making kabaddi a major front ranking sport in India," he added.
Amongst some of the biggest names who took giant strides to the other sides are Rahul Chaudhari, Siddharth Desai, Monu Goyat, and Sandeep Narwal while others like Pardeep Narwal, Pawan Kumar Sehrawat, Ajay Thakur and Fazel Atrachali were expectantly retained by their respective teams from last season.
Many new faces will also be competing in the league this season who emerged from the Future Kabaddi Heroes programme, and they include the likes of Nitesh Kumar, Surender Singh and Rohit Gulia.