Daniel Andrews’ Commonwealth Games ‘kabaddi ambush’

How Premier Daniel Andrews ambushed 2026 Commonwealth Games chiefs with an election plan to win Indian votes.

Premier Daniel Andrews with Luckee Kohli.

Daniel Andrews’ vote-grabbing election promise to add the popular Indian sport of kabaddi to the 2026 Commonwealth Games came despite organisers opposing the late inclusion of extra events.

Less than two weeks before last year’s November 26 election, the Victorian Premier ignored hard-pressed organisers and announced kabaddi as an exhibition event as Labor stepped up its pitch for Indian community votes.

Three sources familiar with Games preparations have revealed that in the months before the Premier’s announcement, Visit Victoria, the government’s key tourism and major events body, was pushing hard for kabaddi – a cross between rugby and wrestling, but without a ball – to be included.

The Australian believes the November 14 announcement took some figures connected with the Games – axed two months ago amid a $4.4bn blowout, leaving taxpayers with a $380m compensation bill – by surprise.

Kabaddi players at a tournament in Melbourne.

“Kabaddi was never on the program as a sport, as a demonstration sport or an exhibition sport,” one source told The Australian.

“We didn’t do any work on it. We never looked at it. It was never on the program. Just like croquet was never on the program. There were competition sports, and that was it.

“We were fully aware and very focused that we did not have the capacity as an organising committee to take on additional demonstration, exhibition, ‘nice to have’, events.

“It was very much around 12 days of competition sports, 12 days of medal sports, and we never opened the door remotely to other ‘wouldn’t it be fun to do’ events.”

Another source close to the Games preparation team said Visit Victoria advocated for kabaddi in the middle of 2022 when additional sports were being considered, but the bid was not successful.

The government’s late decision to include kabaddi as an exhibition event speaks to the wider chaos that engulfed the 2026 Commonwealth Games, the eventual axing of which sparked a political crisis for his government.

Kabaddi is popular among Melbourne’s booming Sikh community, who mostly live in the city’s outer western, northern and southeastern suburbs. There are an estimated 250,000 Indians living in Victoria and emerging as an influential political force.

In the November 14 press release headlined “kabaddi showcase at the 2026 Commonwealth Games”, the government promised Indian voters if re-elected it “will host a kabaddi exhibition match in the lead-up to the 2026 Commonwealth Games”.

“We’ll host a kabaddi exhibition match in the lead up to the 2026 Commonwealth Games – to celebrate culture, promote physical activity and provide the whole community the opportunity to tap in to a unique sporting and cultural experience,” the press release states.

The Andrews government confirmed it had been in discussions with local and international kabaddi representatives, and the event, while timed to coincide with the Games, was not to be funded out of the Games budget.

“We make no apologies for celebrating and supporting our multicultural communities – the showcase match was not intended to be an official part of the Games,” a government spokesperson said.

In an embarrassing twist given the ultimate collapse of the Games, the Premier’s election press release took the opportunity to attack Liberal leader Matthew Guy, claiming: “Matthew Guy’s Liberals can’t be trusted to support multicultural communities – they only pretend to care about communities in an election year.”

After issuing the press release on November 14, the Premier visited the Blackburn Gurdwara two days later and again spruiked the kabaddi event.

“We are going to have a kabaddi exhibition match, which I think will be just a great celebration of that sport,” he told SBS.

Joining Mr Andrews at the Blackburn temple was influential Sikh identity Luckee Kohli, who runs the bottle shop around the corner from the Premier’s Mulgrave home and counts him as a close friend.

Renowned in the Indian community for boasting about his friendship with the Premier, Mr Kohli has also been associated with two of Melbourne’s most prominent kabaddi promoters, brothers Arshdeep and Lovedeep Khakh.

In 2019, Mr Kohli helped launch the Khakh brothers’ “Kabaddi World Cup” at a Port Melbourne restaurant, run by flamboyant restaurateur, ex-nightclub security boss and fashion designer Jamal Khan.

Lovedeep Khakh, left, with Jamal Khan and Luckee Kohli promoting a kabaddi tournament in 2019

Asked if he had lobbied the Premier to include kabaddi, Mr Kohli told The Australian: “Nah, nah, I was not involved.”

The Khakh brothers, who have also operated a number of car insurance and smash repairs businesses, are emerging powerbrokers in the Indian community, with observers crediting their rapid rise to their kabaddi tournaments.

All three sources said Visit Victoria was leading the government’s push to include kabaddi.

“It was pursued by the government and Visit Victoria … but the Commonwealth Games doesn’t have exhibition sports, you’re either in or you’re out,” one source said.

Another said: “Visit Victoria were very keen to find a way of including kabaddi in the additional sports program, but it never got to the shortlist, so it was never a serious contender for inclusion into the main sports program.”