Bengal Warriors players Mahesh Goud and Navin Shah surprised shoppers at Diamond Plaza mall, Nagerbazar, on Sunday evening. The duo picked four shoppers each to form their teams that competed against each other as part of Bengal Warriors presents ‘Ignite The Warrior in You’, in association with The Telegraph. From push-ups and sit-ups to continuous chanting of kabaddi… kabaddi… in one breath, the team members did it all. Navin’s team was declared the winner. 

Two other players, Shyam Kumar Sha and Kedar Lal, had a good time with shoppers at Metropolis mall, Hiland Park

METROPOLIS

DIAMOND PLAZA

Four litres of milk with 200g of butter

? Seven chapattis dripping ghee at every meal with lentils, paneer and salad thrice daily

l Seven to eight pieces of chicken or mutton at lunch

l A snack of chhole aur badaam, fruit juices and halwa in between meals

 

The calorie count of this diet of a Bengal Warriors player can put someone watching his weight in serious trouble.

But a player needs all the protein and carbohydrate he can get ahead of the Pro Kabaddi League 2015 starting on July 18 in Mumbai.

At the pre-season camp of the state's kabaddi franchise, with which The Telegraph is associated, at Novotel in Rajarhat, youngsters like Parveen Madanlal, Deepak Dhull and Manoj Gora from north India are often seen dropping four to five 10g butter cubes in a large container of milk and gulping it down.

Carbohydrates in the form of chapattis - coated liberally with ghee - are the mainstay of the diet.

Sometimes players have such chapattis with only a bowl of dal and at times with paneer and salad.

It is not everyone but players from Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and Gujarat - who make up most of the Warriors' team, including the new captain Dinesh Kumar, 34, from Delhi, a former India captain and Arjuna awardee - who follow such a diet.

The biggest north Indian player's diet has 12,000 calories, which is nearly what champion swimmer Michael Phelps is known to consume before a competition, nutritionist and t2 columnist Hena Nafis said.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, the average Indian man needs 2,400 to 2,600 calories and the woman between 1,900 and 2,200 calories daily.

Bengal Warriors physio Aijaz Ashai said the calorie intake of the players varies with the kind of exercise regimen being followed.

A member of the support staff said the daily calorie intake of most players in the team was around 8,000 but could go up to 12,000 for the tallest and biggest players.

"The players wake up at 6am," he said. "The boys from north India have a breakfast of chapattis and dal before heading for practice.

"The practice ends around 10am. Lunch is at noon, when they again have chapattis with paneer or meat, along with salad. For dinner, it is again chapattis with dal. Milk goes with every meal."

This year, the number of players has increased from 14 to around 24 or 25 in each of the eight franchises.

What many of the players find fascinating is they get any amount of food they want for free. "We are very well taken care of by the owners of the Bengal Warriors, the Future Group," Dinesh Kumar said.

"We are kept in star hotels, we have the best quality food and any amount of it that we ask for. I never thought such a time would come in kabaddi."

But for tournaments at the district, state and even national levels, players from the north still carry 2kg of home-made ghee with them.

"They won't survive without their ghee. Also, the quality has to be ensured. So the safest thing for them is to carry home-made stuff to state and national tournaments, where facilities are sometimes minimal," said assistant coach and former India international B.C. Ramesh.

Experts say players need to follow such a diet to withstand the rigours of a high-intensity body contact game like kabaddi, which requires immense muscle strength.

For the thumping collisions, fat is required, which is why butter and ghee become important elements in the diet.

Excess protein intake and exercise is required for other body contact games as well.

For example, in rugby, professional players take protein supplements because food alone would not provide the required number of calories.

Jamie Twigg, 20, who plays for the Leeds first team in England, has four to five meals daily, starting with porridge and carbohydrates for breakfast.

He follows it up with a snack and lunch of a whole chicken breast and 300g pasta. Before dinner he has another meal.

Dinner, after a gym session, is heavier than lunch with a larger portion of chicken or pork or beef, along with potatoes and salad.

But even after such a diet, Jamie takes two protein shakes a day.

In the case of rugby, as also kabaddi, the heavy food intake has to be supplemented by an exercise regimen that includes weight and strength training.

The kabaddi players run with truck tyres tied to their stomachs, something that physical trainer Sheeba Mehra describes as high-intensity muscle strength training.

"Kabaddi requires extremely strong muscles and only heavy-duty training can produce that kind of muscle and strength," Mehra said. "And for such training, a very heavy diet is required. So, it all adds up."

According to her, this is what keeps the players going when a big raider lunges forward to touch an opponent only to be bodily lifted from behind by three just as well-built defenders who land on him and often on each other.

Yet everyone comes out unscathed from most such encounters.

Kabaddi training also involves playing football and handball. And there is "shadow" practice, like in cricket, where a player imagines a match situation complete with fellow defenders and plans his movements, especially the timing of his lunges.

According to Shyam Kumar Sha, the only man from Bengal in the Bengal Warriors (the entire tournament has just three men from Bengal) players from Bengal don't get to taste much butter and ghee.

"Butter and ghee are too expensive for most players in Bengal. They are made in every home in rural north India but not here," Shyam said. "Our players still have the unhealthy jhalmuri or ghugni or whatever they can afford after practice when they are hungry."

The "left cover" for Bengal Warriors, however, said that the players who represent Bengal at the national level have started following the diet of the players from the north.

The kabaddi academies in the state need more support from the government or corporate houses to ensure that players can have butter and mutton from a very young age.

Bengal Warriors takes on Bengaluru Bulls on July 18 and their home matches at Netaji Indoor Stadium are from July 22 to 25.