In places like Calcutta, with everybody glued to their television sets, life
grinds to a halt the days the Indian team is playing. One-day fixtures and test matches
excite equal enthusiasm; for both, if the match is being played on Indian soil, which by
the way supports spin rather than pace, you’ll get capacity crowds and a charged
atmosphere seldom matched anywhere outside the subcontinent. Allegations of murky match
fixing and a steady string of matches where the team managed to “snatch defeat from
the jaws of victory” notwithstanding, the popularity of the game continues to rise.
Such is the intensity of involvement with the game that it even affects India’s
international relations. In the aftermath of the 1999 Kargil war, India unilaterally
suspended cricketing relations with Pakistan. The debate on whether politics and sports
should mix enlivens many a discussion, and is yet unresolved. |
Hard to imagine but at one time the place that
cricket is accorded 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 the gold medal home every time, from six consecutive games. The introduction of
Astroturf, a faster surface than grass and one still largely unavailable in India, coupled
with the migration of many hockey-playing Anglo Indians to Australia spelt 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, nothing
succeeds like success and the fact that the Indian team has been posting wins at regular
intervals has greatly helped the game’s cause.
Among indigenous games perhaps the best known is kabaddi. It involves
two teams standing across a line on the ground. By turns the teams send a player into the
opponent’s territory so that he can ‘tag’ and thereby send out of the game
members of that team. The catch is that the player must do this in the span of a single
breath, all the time muttering “kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi….”
so that if he does take in another lung of air the team can immediately tell. The team
whose territory the player has entered must try to capture the player and keep him on
their side of the demarcating line till he does run out of breath. In which case he is
sent out of the game. Kabaddi has become a formal institutionalised sport but
basically, it owes its popularity to the fact that you don’t need any props, the
rules are simple and it can be played in any dusty alley so long as there are enough
people with nothing to do.
Top
Polo is supposed to have been invented by Iranian tribes in the 9th
century AD. By and by it spread far and wide towards the east, reaching even Japan.
Brought to India with Muslim conquerors who established their rule in Delhi, polo was in
India by the last part of the 12th century. It captured the imagination of the
ruling elite in the north, especially of the Rajput princes of the western land of
Rajasthan who, already master cavaliers, soon mastered the game. However, in the
northeastern India, in the state of Manipur, polo was never an elitist sport. Anybody who
owned or could loan a horse would play the game. With the disappearance of the great
eastern empires and as the political life of India itself became tumultuous with the
arrival of the expansionist Mughals, leisure itself and certainly pleasures like polo
seemed to disappear too. It was the British rediscovery of the game in Manipur in the
early 19th century, where it is called Sagol Kangjei, that breathed
fresh life into the sport. The fame of the game spread along with the spread of Empire.
Today, polo is played by a select section of people - former princes, erstwhile nobility,
students with a privileged public school education, the armed services and such like. But
in Manipur, the game is still played by anybody who owns a horse and mallet or can borrow
one.
Other indigenous sports of India include kho-kho (an
improvisation of the game of ‘tag’), archery, and board games like chauser
and pachisi. Still seen in the gullies of old cities and towns, particularly where
there is a predominant Muslim population, are sports like kabootar baazi and cock
fights. A master of the former can train his brood of pigeons (kabootars) to fly up
into the sky, round up his competitor’s brood and usher them home to him. Though they
have earned the wrath of animal rights activists worldwide, cockfights can still be
watched in parts of India.
Kite flying is a favourite pastime for children and adults alike. Come
winter (specially the 14th of Jan – the festival of Makar Sankranti) and
the skies are filled with fluttering paper kites of every hue and shape. There is keen
competition among kite flyers; the string is coated with glass dust so that it can cut the
string of another kite when they're in flight. On the subcontinent the beauty of the kite
and the imaginativeness of its shape is secondary to the dexterity of its owner.
Invented by some British officers of the Indian army standing around at a game of
billiards, ‘snooker’ came into being in the Indian city of Jubbulpore
(now Jabalpur). It spread through the cantonment towns of India first, was taken back to
England and thereon taken around the empire. Undoubtedly snooker is an expensive game and
few can afford the space and the attendant paraphernalia. So, it is its poorer cousin
‘pool’ that has caught the fancy of Indian youth today. In most cities
you’ll find many pool parlours where half an hour at a table can cost as little as 30
rupees.
Another game thought to have originated in India is chess. Since the 6th
century AD, when the game is thought to have been born, many of the rules and perhaps even
the form have changed. But even in its modern versions, it is thought that the basics of
the game are the same as were developed in ancient India and Persia where it was
introduced by traders from here. An increasing number of Indians, both amateurs and
professionals are playing chess at the international level. The most famous example is, of
course, Vishwanathan Anand.
Unlike chess in that they did originate in India, but like chess in that they
have caught the imagination of the country in the wake of international success are tennis
and badminton. The recent successes of the doubles team of Leander Paes and Mahesh
Bhupathi in tennis and of the badminton player Pulela Gopichand who won the All England in
2001 have persuaded many players to take up both sports seriously. |
