English, as in the last tribe of the British Isles. If true, what happened at the International Kabaddi Tournament at the Jinnah stadium in Islamabad raises a whole lot of thorny questions. Now when and where did the English start playing kabaddi? Not in the dust bowls of the Gangetic plains in the last century, they didn't. Not in the back alleys of the Bombay Presidency.

Hu tu tu they watched from afar but feared to engage in, probably because they were not allowed to make the rules. In any case, their natural game is football. The suspicion must be that English kabaddi has played the same kind of sneaky trick on India that Australian hockey did. They took the best Indian brawn and skill, put it in theirteam and had the gall to come out and challenge us. It is the sort of thing foreigners do all the time. Look at physics and computer software. Sure enough, they've done it with kabaddi.

The defenders and raiders on the English kabaddi side turn out to be the flower of Punjab, Balvinders, Balbirs, Satnams. So that's alright then, they're one of us, kabaddi in the blood, fancy footwork and feints as natural as breathing the air of the subcontinent. Nothing English about it at all. And yet, something is not quite right.

Now that our competitive advantage is threatened, all those who believed hu tu tu was an Indian speciality will have to think twice about pushing it, straightforwardly or otherwise, with the International Olympic Committee. Not that the IOC has taken a blind bit of notice of kabaddi so far. However, everyone has learned this year how things are done at Geneva, so it is surely only a matter of time and finding open-minded committee members before kabaddi gets the global recognition itdeserves.

But is it worth it after all? With the Indian diaspora as huge as it is, every national kabaddi team will be able to field Indians and it will be the old hockey story all over again. There's a lot to be said for keeping hu tu tu pure and swadeshi.

What it boils down to in the end is a tough decision. How does India want to conquer the world? It's a choice of three: cricket, football or kabaddi. No one can say cricket is not a great game without running the risk of being lynched. It is great. But who wants to play only the remnants of the Commonwealth for another century? For one reason or another cricket doesn't fire the imagination of the entire world.

Football does that; even the Americans are compelled to learn it. Kabaddi could do it with some good promotion. Cricket has no dangerous close encounters, the cunning tackles and grapples of football and kabaddi that keep stadia on the edge all the time. Football and kabaddi demand organisation and speed of a high order.

There is rapidaction; no waiting for the ball to trickle to the outfield or the bowler to count his paces before the tension builds up again. As between football and kabaddi -- it's a tough choice.