The British Army is learning the popular traditional Indian sport of kabaddi and hopes that the game will help it recruit from the under-represented Asian community.
A team of kabaddi players meets often at a gymnasium in Larkhill, Wiltshire, to practice the sport. The team recently defeated a kabaddi team from Italy, and is likely to play against a team of India's Border Security Force (BSF) soon.
The game was first introduced in Britain through a Channel 4 documentary in the early 1990s. It soon gained a small but devoted following, including among some police forces.
The army team's coach is Ashok Das, a Indian-origin Briton, who believes his players will form the nucleus of an English national team that will challenge India's dominance in the game.
'The problem is, sometimes the players get sent off to Iraq or Afghanistan,' he told The Times.
The team was first assembled in July 2007, after Das persuaded army recruitment officers that a kabaddi team could be a powerful recruitment tool in the Asian community.
Colonel Paul Farrar, deputy head of Army Recruiting, saw 'a really good game, something the British Army ought to look at seriously.'
Second Lieutenant Nick Burdick, of 14 Regiment, the Royal Artillery, in Larkhill, was tasked with putting a team together.
He said it might have been easier to recruit a team 'if it had a different name, like Murderball or Bulldog', but in the end he walked out of his office, picked up a group of soldiers and told them they were going to be in a kabaddi team.
Colonel Farrar believes the momentum of the team is growing, with the Army Physical Training Corps taking an interest in its martial qualities.
'I have been in the Army for 35 years and never heard of kabaddi,' he said, adding, 'Perhaps in another 30 years we will look back on these 18 months and say, This was when it all started.'