MUMBAI: India’s sport of Kabaddi has grown leaps and bounds with the growth of India’s flagship kabaddi league, VIVO Pro Kabaddi. Encouraging the growth of the sport amongst the younger generation, Star Sports announces the second season of KBD Juniors. Season 2 will be hosted across the 12 Vivo Pro Kabaddi Season VI cities. The tournament will have 24 schools per city, and 3,500 students between the age group of 11 to 12 years battle it out to make it to the grand finale.

Kabaddi requires nimble footwork of a boxer, the strength of a wrestler, tactical acuity of a chess player, agility and reflexes of a gymnast and endurance of a runner. Keeping this spirit of Kabaddi alive amongst the younger generation, KBD Juniors Season 2, will be bigger and better as the invitation to participate in the tournament was shared with multiple schools and 288 schools will participate this season, an advancement from the 96 schools that participated in season 1.

Building on the success of Season 1, that registered an impressive cumulative reach of 156.4 million viewers over the season, and had South Point World School from Sonipat win the title, Season 2 is now back to crown new glory. To ensure maximum participation from schools across the 12 cities, the invitational tournament has been designed as city qualifiers, city finals and national finals.

The city qualifiers, scheduled to be hosted between end of August and early September, as the run up to Season VI of VIVO Pro Kabaddi. 24 schools are divided into 8 groups of 3 teams who will play against each other. From each group, the team finishing first will then make it to the round of city finals, which will take place during the home leg of each city as part of Season VI of VIVO Pro Kabaddi and then the National finals.

The city qualifiers began today in Hyderabad, where the new participating schools include, Scholars International School, Oxford Grammar School, Nampally Vyayamshala High School, Lotus School, Manikonda, among others. Hyderabad Public School, Gitanjali Senior School and VV Govt school had participated in KBD Juniors Season 1 and P. Obul Reddy Public School won the city finals.

KBD Juniors targeted at young students will offer the benefits of an incredible sport to youngsters across these cities and will help grow the popularity for India's indigenous sport. To prepare the schools for the tournament, Star Sports along with Mashal Sports Pvt. Ltd., the league organisers also provide initial training to the PE teachers in each school via an introductory kit along with coach meet and greets.

The season 2 of KBD Juniors will be broadcast on Star Sports and Hotstar during Season VI of VIVO Pro Kabaddi. The broadcast schedule for the matches will be released at a later date.