Sportstar·India·Wednesday, September 16, 2026 at 09:24 AM

India’s sepak takraw star Akash Yumnam’s medal cabinet has one glaring gap. He wants to fill it at Asian Games 2026

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Jonathan Selvaraj

Airborne: Akash Yumnam in action against Iran during the Sepak Takraw Super Series in New Delhi on August 31, 2013. More than a decade later, he remains the senior statesman of India’s sepak takraw team, preparing for his fourth Asian Games. | Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA

There is a medal cabinet in Akash Yumnam’s house in the village of Laipham Khunou near Manipur’s capital, Imphal. It contains almost everything a sepak takraw player could want. Almost. The bronze medal he won at the 2018 Asian Games is there.

So are the other medals accumulated through a career that has now stretched across nearly a decade and a half. His young son sometimes looks at the cabinet, switches its light on and off, and stares at the medals without yet understanding what they mean. Akash does. But he also knows what is missing.

“I need to win another medal,” he says. At 30, Akash is widely considered the best player and the senior statesman of the Indian men’s sepak takraw team heading to the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. It will be his fourth Asian Games. If there’s anyone in India who can dream of another medal, it’s Akash.

Arun Kumar, a 23-year-old Delhi player competing at his second Asian Games, agrees. “Akash bhai is the best player in India. He’s probably among the top five strikers in the world,” he says.

There is little showmanship in the way Akash talks about himself. His teammates do the boasting for him. Bobby Kumar, a 21-year-old from Bihar who has emerged as one of India’s younger attacking options, says Akash’s greatest quality is his discipline. “He will warm up in the morning and evening. He will take care of himself — food and water, everything on time. He won’t adjust for a day. He will go and go, no matter what,” Bobby says.

That routine has allowed Akash to remain at the highest level in a sport that demands extraordinary athleticism. Sepak takraw is an unforgiving game: players leap, twist and strike a ball with their feet, legs, heads and bodies, often in movements that look closer to martial arts or gymnastics than conventional ball sports.

Age so far hasn’t caught up with him. “I think if I keep physically fit, I can keep playing. I think I could play the 2030 Asian Games as well. But I don’t want to think so far into the future. For now I want a medal,” he says. If anything, the strangest thing about Akash’s career may be that sepak takraw was not his first love.

Growing up in Manipur, like most other children his age, he played football. He was around 11 when two coaches, Rakeshwar Singh and Jamendra Singh, showed up at the village playground and started training children in a new sport.

The game’s movements seemed crazy, but they also seemed familiar. Akash’s football background helped him understand the aerial movements almost immediately — the rolling shot, one of sepak takraw’s signature attacking movements, was not completely alien to someone who had known how to execute a bicycle kick. He started playing seriously around 2009. Within a few years, he was moving through the age-group ranks: sub-junior, junior, then senior competition. By 2013 he had already played several international tournaments.

All through this, another possibility beckoned. Football.

Akash was good enough to earn a training stint with NEROCA, one of Manipur’s prominent football clubs that had played multiple seasons in the I-League, India’s top tier of professional football at the time. He spent about a month with the club.

Parallel paths: Tondonba Singh (#6), who hails from Akash Yumnam’s village in Manipur, followed the footballing path Akash once considered. He currently plays for NorthEast United. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

For a young player from a State that has produced generations of footballers, the attraction was obvious. He had more than a few friends who had gone down that path. Tondonba Singh, who hails from Akash’s village, currently plays for NorthEast United. There was serious money to be made in football. There didn’t seem to be much of a reward in sepak takraw.

But his father convinced him to stay. “He told me to play just one Asian Games. So I thought I’d play the 2014 Games and then I’ll return to football,” he says.

Akash did play at the 2014 Games in Incheon. But by the time they were over, he had changed his mind. He was only 19, and although he had already competed internationally, the scale of the Asian Games was different. He leaned heavily on the senior players around him. India did not medal.

The bronze at Jakarta-Palembang in 2018 felt different. It did more than change his sporting resume. “It changed the lives of everyone who played sepak takraw,” he says.

Before that, playing sepak takraw did not necessarily mean financial security. Akash remembers a period when he had already represented India internationally but still had to work as a labourer, helping build houses to earn money while continuing to train. There were few facilities. A national medal did not automatically translate into a career.

He eventually joined the Sashastra Seema Bal, an official border-guarding organisation in India, and began to build a more stable life. The 2018 medal brought a promotion and greater recognition. Other players in the team got government jobs. “I’ve come from a time when there was nothing in the sport. Now there is a lot more opportunity to grow with the sport. I’ve seen it happen,” he says.

In India, the game has changed in more ways than one. When Akash started, the national team was overwhelmingly dependent on players from Manipur, the State across the border from Myanmar, where a related traditional game has long been played. The current squad still has a strong Manipuri presence. Malemnganba Singh Sorokhaibam, who plays as a feeder — players who block strikes and set up shots — is from Manipur, as is Lokhon Singh, who plays as a striker.

Meanwhile, Bobby brings Bihar into the mix, while Delhi is represented by feeders Arun Kumar and Ram Kumar. From Assam comes Amarjit Singha, another feeder adding to the growing pool of talent.

Modest beginnings: Bobby Kumar, one of India’s emerging sepak takraw players, took up the sport after spotting a game in a park near his home in Patna. From playing barefoot there, he has gone on to the senior national team and his first Asian Games. | Photo Credit: Aditya Padinjat

Bobby’s own story illustrates that change. Bobby first encountered sepak takraw in a park near his home in Patna, Bihar, in 2015. He had been playing cricket and football when he saw people playing the unfamiliar sport. He tried it barefoot and was hooked.

In 2019, he took the bigger gamble of moving to the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre in Bareilly, a city in the Northern State of Uttar Pradesh, against the wishes of his father, a former footballer. “At that time my only dream was that I’d one day play for India — I thought that I would play in India,” he says. “It’s a dream. I will fulfil my dream.”

Seven years later, he is part of the senior national team and headed to his first Asian Games. His goal is the same as Akash’s. “We want to stand on the podium. We know we can,” he says. While Bobby doesn’t have much experience with failure, Akash does. At the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, India men finished seventh in both events, regu and quad, in which Akash competed.

“I felt I had let the team down,” he says. But there was also a tactical reason. Competing in the quad, India had been playing with one striker. Opponents had learned how to block that attack. Akash remembers being blocked repeatedly and struggling to find a way through.

The team going to Aichi-Nagoya has embraced a two-striker system. Arun explains the thinking. “For a long time, no one thought of playing two strikers in sepak takraw. But at the last Asian Games, the Philippines played with two strikers. So you have multiple chances of making attacks. They ended up winning medals in both the regu and quad events. So we got an idea from them,” he says.

India’s defence has also changed. Previously, the team relied heavily on foot blocks. Now its players are using the waist as well. “Our blocking is amongst the best in the world right now,” Arun says.

Although India is competing in the team regu as well, Arun believes its best chance is in the quad event. The latter format has four players on court, rather than the three used in regu. If India has to challenge the dominance of the traditional Southeast Asian powers in this sport, which traces its roots to Malaysia and Thailand, Akash will have to play a major role.

There’s reason to believe this is possible. In February this year, the Indian team beat Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan to win gold in the quad event at the Asian Sepak Takraw Championship in Nagoya, the official test event for these Asian Games.

It is a more tactically flexible Indian team than the one that went to Hangzhou. It has already tested and proved itself against the best. Still, there is no complacency.

Akash knows better. “In the league, everyone is tough,” he says. “Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos — they play well. We have to beat at least two of them if we want to make it to the semifinals. We will not win easily, but we are confident that we will do well,” he says.

Published on Sep 16, 2026

India’s sepak takraw star Akash Yumnam’s medal cabinet has one glaring gap. He wants to fill it at Asian Games 2026

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