Nine battles played in sport (5,6)
I believe the answer is:
table tennis
'sport' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'nine battles played' is the wordplay.
'played' indicates an anagram.
'nine'+'battles'='ninebattles'
'ninebattles' is an anagram of 'TABLE-TENNIS'.
'in' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for table tennis that I've seen before include "Indoor game" , "Ping pong" , "Ping-pong" , "sport" .)