INDIAN SPORTS

 

The history of Indian sports dates back to Vedic period. During the time of Ramayana and Mahabharata, men were taught by gurus and they learnt various sports like chariot racing, horse riding, wrestling, weight lifting, swimming, archery and hunting. Apart from these outdoor sports, women of the house played many indoor games. After the independence of India, the Indian government gave more importance to sports. The traditional Indian sports are kabbadi, kho kho, pehlwani, hockey and gilli danda. Other sports commonly played in India are cricket, football, volley ball, golf, tennis, squash, hockey, snooker, billiards, boxing, martial arts, etc.

 

The Sports Authority of India is one of the wings of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and this promotes various sports and talents in young people. This also works to provide coaching facilities and necessary infrastructure. Arjuna Award was incepted in 1961 and is given to people who excel in a particular sport.

 

Athletics is one of the important of the Indian sports which rely on the strength of the human body. The various athletic events include 100 meters, 200 meters to as much as 10, 000 meters running, 100 meters hurdles, relay race, high jump, long jump, discus throw, javelin throw, etc. Anju Bobby George, Devendra Jhajharia, Soma iswas, KM Binu, Neelam Jaswant Singh, Gopal Shaini, Sriram Singh and Asha Agarwal are some of the athletes who won the Arjuna Award.

 

The most popular of all Indian sports is cricket and India has a very strong cricket team that plays in the international one day and test matches. All the events related to cricket are managed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India popularly known as BCCI. There are several cricket stadiums in India where international matches are held namely Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium, Wankhede Stadium, Vidarbha C. A. Ground, M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Brabourne Stadium, Eden Gardens, etc. Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy are conducted within India. IPL conducts twenty 20 matches in every season.

 

The national sport of India is hockey. There are many hockey clubs in India. Indian hockey team played in 1928, 1932, 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1964 and 1980 Olympics and won gold medal in 1964 Tokyo Olympics and 1980 Moscow Olympics. Some of the famous hockey players of India are Ajit Pal Singh, Udham Singh, Dhanraj Pillay, Dhyan Chand, K. D. Singh, Mohammed Shahid, Gagan Ajit Singh, Leslie Claudius, Balbir Singh, etc.

 

The Indian chess is famous all over the world and the rules of the modern chess were established in 1952. Some of the famous chess players in India are Manuel Aaron, Dibyendu Barua, Sandipan Chanda, Abhijeet Gupta, Pentala Harikrishna and Humpy Koneru. Viswanathan Anand became the youngest Indian Grandmaster in 1984 at his age of 15.

 

There are many football clubs in India promoting this Indian sport and the oldest among them being Mohun Bagan AC. Some of the notable football players are Baichunga Bhutia, Steven Dias, Neville De Souza, Peter Thangaraj, Subimal Chuni Goswami, etc. The game of tennis was brought into India by British and many Indians like Mahesh Bhupathi, Leander Pais, Sania Mirza, etc. excel in this sport.  

 

In 1900 Olympics Norman Pritchard won two medals in athletics for India. India won its first gold medal in 1928 Amsterdam Olympics in Field Hockey. Abhinav Singh Bindra won first individual gold medal in 2008 Beijing Olympics in shooting. India holds the lowest number of Olympic medals per capita among all the countries of the world that have won at least one medal and it shows that the Indian sports is still at its primitive stage and yet to develop a lot.

Article Posted By : SumazlalView All Articles

Suhaina Mazhar is a freelance content writer and blogger with five years experience in content writing. http://sumazla.blogspot.com is her blog.

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Keywords :
INDIAN SPORTS , sports of India , indian national sport

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