Does Home Turf Matter?

In Pro Kabaddi the teams play in a caravan format travelling from one city to another, there will be a home team and that team will play four matches continuously on the trot on consecutive days in front of the home crowd.

What is the advantage of being a home team?

One might think, the home team gets all the support and they are in it to win it (all four matches). He/She could not be more wrong.

Apart from some teams which are superbly strong, the home advantage has been negligible for most of the teams.

It is true that the fan support can give you that extra confidence boost when you are down but that just can’t make a team playing poorly be champions at the home turf.

The home advantage may be true in football and cricket where the conditions like ground and climate affects the game and being familiar to those conditions can give an advantage for the home team.

In case of Kabaddi, which is played indoors the only support a team gets is through the crowd cheers and if a team plays good irrespective of the fact that they are the opposition or the home team, crowd will cheer although for the home team the cheers will be louder and longer.

What happened in this Season?

In the graph,green color indicates win, red indicates loss and yellow indicates tie.

For Season 3, we have come up with the win streak for all the teams and have found that except Patna Pirates and U Mumba; no other team has a clear home advantage.

I think it is safe to assume that the home advantage would not be a huge factor in the performances of these teams as one is at its best and other at the bottom of the table.

Even if the home advantage is somewhat nonexistent,the support of the fans is the one thing that gives the players motivation and inspiration to do more.

Cheers to the fans who are the life of Kabaddi in India, there will be no stars without fans and there is no Pro Kabaddi without fans!!