Manuel ZEHNDER

The Netherlands have been at the forefront of developing handball over the past two decades in every discipline – in indoor and beach handball just as well as in wheelchair handball as, over the past few years, the Dutch Handball Association (NHV) made serious strides in developing a successful wheelchair handball team.

With a large pool of potential players, it was logical for India to create their wheelchair handball team, just in time for the inaugural edition of the IHF Four-a-Side Wheelchair Handball World Championship, with 10 players slated to make history at Egypt 2022.
 
The team was formed this year, but the players have plenty of experience in other sports, like wheelchair basketball or wheelchair badminton, sports that have been getting more exposure than handball in India over the last decades.

Wheelchair handball has been getting more and more popular throughout the whole world in the past 15 years, in different countries with different backgrounds. The countries where indoor or beach handball is popular have been at the forefront of the adoption of the new discipline, as highlighted by several countries in Europe.

Hosting the first ever IHF Four-a-Side Wheelchair Handball World Championship has put a new emphasis on the discipline in Egypt, which has been gaining popularity over the last few months.

In fact, with Egypt dominating African handball in the men’s indoor handball competitions over the past decade, including a hat-trick of wins in the continental championships this summer, it was just about right that wheelchair handball was going to become an important part of the development of the sport in the African country.

Wheelchair handball has been popular in South and Central America over the past two decades and has getting more and more focus in the region. While Brazil has been the driving force, other nations have adopted the discipline as well, such as Chile.

In Brazil, wheelchair handball made its debut in 2005, in the city of Toledo, Paraná. Professor Décio Roberto Calegari and his collaborators developed the rules for the practice of handball in a wheelchair, trying to create a dynamic, inclusive and low-cost sport, which culminated in the creation of Wheelchair Handball Four-a-Side.