Indian Sports

Undoubtedly the first sport that comes to mind when one thinks of Indian sports today is cricket. Brought to India by her British colonizers, cricket, then captured the nations imagination that observers are more or less agree that today it is a religion that unites India. (The other favorite comment here is a country of one billion cricket experts.)

Places like Calcutta, with all glued to their televisions, life grinds to a halt the day the Indian team plays. One-day fixtures and test matches arouse the same enthusiasm for both, if the match is played on Indian soil, which also underpins spin rather than pace, you will have the capacity audience and a charged atmosphere rarely matched anywhere outside the subcontinent. Allegations of match fixing murky and a constant string of matches where the team managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory despite the popularity of the game continues to grow. Such is the intensity of involvement with the game that it even affects India’s international relations. In the wake of the 1999 Kargil war, India unilaterally suspended cricketing relations with Pakistan. The debate about whether politics and sport should mix enlivens many a discussion, and is still unresolved.

Hard to imagine, but at a time, place, that cricket is granted today in the popular consciousness was reserved for hockey. The heyday of Indian hockey was in the Olympic years from 1928 to 1956, when the hockey team brought home a gold medal each time, from six consecutive games. The introduction of Astroturf, a faster surface than grass, and a still largely unavailable in India, combined with the migration of many hockey games Anglo-Indians to Australia spelled the end of the golden era. Hockey is the national game of India and a new crop of players, including the charismatic Dhanraj Pillay has rekindled popular interest in the game. Of course success Nothing succeeds like success, and the fact that the Indian team has been posting wins at regular intervals has greatly helped the game cause.

Among the original game perhaps the best known is kabaddi. It involves two teams faced one line on the ground. By switching teams send a player into the opponent’s territory, so that he can tag and thus send out of the game are members of this team. The catch is that the player must do so in the span of a single breath, constantly muttering kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi. so that if he takes in another lung air team can immediately tell. The team, whose plays have concluded, must try to catch the player and keep him on their side of the line demarcating until he can not run out of breath. In which case he is sent out of the game. Kabaddi is a formal institutionalized sports, but basically, it owes its popularity to the fact that you do not need any props, the rules are simple, and it can be played in every dusty alley, as long as there are enough people with nothing to do .

Polo is supposed to have been invented by Iranian tribes in the 9th century AD. By and by the far and wide to the east, and even reached Japan. Brought to India by Muslim invaders established their rule in Delhi, polo was in India in the last part of the 12th century. It caught the imagination of the ruling elite in the north, notably the Rajput princes in the western state of Rajasthan, already champion cavaliers, soon mastered the game. But in northeastern India, in the Land of Manipur, polo was never an elitist sport. Anyone who owned or could borrow a horse to play the game. With the disappearance of the great Eastern empires and political life in India itself was stormed with the arrival of the expansionist Mughal, leisure itself and certainly pleasures like polo seemed to disappear. It was the rediscovery of the British game in Manipur in the early 19th century, when it is called Sagol Kangjei that reinvigorated the sport. Rumors spread about the game along with spread of the Empire. Today, polo is played by a selected portion of the population - former princes, nobility then, students with a privileged public school education, defense and the like. But in Manipur, the game is still played by anyone who owns a horse and mallet or can borrow one.

Other original sports in India include Kho-Kho (an improvisation of the game of tag), archery, and board games as chaussee and Pachisi. Still seen in the canyons of old cities, especially where there is a predominantly Muslim population, are sports like kabootar baazi and cock fights. The driver of the past can train his brood of pigeons (kabootars) to fly up into the sky, round up his competitors fry and usher them home to him. Although they have served anger animal rights activists throughout the world, cockfights can still be seen in parts of India.

Kite flying is a popular pastime for children and adults. Come winter (especially January 14th festival of Makar Sankranti), and the air is filled with fluttering kites of every hue and shape. There is fierce competition among kite flyers string coated with glass dust, so it can cut the string to another go when they are on the run. On the subcontinent beauty dragon and imaginative in its form is secondary to the dexterity of his own.

Invented by some British officers in the Indian army standing around in a game of billiards, snooker originated in the Indian city Jubbulpore (now Jabalpur). The spread in cantonment towns in India first, was taken back to England and taken them around the kingdom. Undoubtedly snooker is an expensive game, and few can afford the space and the associated paraphernalia. So it is the poor cousin pool that has caught the fancy of Indian youth today. In most cities you will find many pool parlors, where half hours on a table can cost as little as 30 rupees.