Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India encyclopedia

SPORTS

and a pitching distance of 60 feet six inches for men and 54 feet six inches for women. The positions of the nine players of a fielding side are: pitcher, catcher, I base, II base, III base, short stop, left fielder, centre fielder and right fielder.

onship for women was introduced in the 1952/53 season at Banga- lore. The Todd Memorial Trophy, the symbol of supremacy for the national men’s championship was, in fact, donated by the Mysore Basketball Association. The trophy for the women’s national championship was donated by Prince Baslat Jha, the brother of the Nizam of Hyderabad, who watched the first national for women organised at the Central College ground in Bangalore. Till 1956, the women’s event was not a regular feature of the BFI’s calendar, but subsequently became an annual event. The national junior championship for boys was introduced in 1955 and the mini national championships for boys and girls in 1973. India’s first international exposure was the participation in the first Asian Games at New Delhi, in 1951. India’s first international win was in the quadrangular (India, erstwhile Ceylon, Iran and Pakistan) league tournament organised by the Pakistan Basketball Federa- tion at Lahore in January 1962. The BFI organised the first coaching camp by the American coach Frank Kaufman at the National Stadium, New Delhi from 1st October, 1955 under the aegis of the United States’ Information Services. This was followed by another coaching camp by another basketball expert, Sam Fox, at New Delhi, Trivandrum, Madras and Calcutta. Though basketball was devised as an indoor game, it has become a very popular outdoor sport in tropical countries like India. Some of the other national trophies are: C.C. Abraham Trophy for junior boys, Mukherjee Trophy for league losers in the nation- als, Traoib Shankaran Memorial Trophy for runners-up in the senior nationals and the Kalinga Trophy for the best disciplined team in the nationals. The BFI is affiliated to the Indian Olympic Association, the Asian Basketball Confederation and the FIBA. Arjuna Awards: Sarabjit Singh, Khushi Ram, Gurdial Singh, Abbas Moontasir, Manmohan Singh, Surinder Kumar Kataria, Anil Kumar Punj, Hanuman Singh, Vijayaraghavan, Omprakash, Ajmer Singh, Suman Sharma and Radhey Shyam.

BASKETBALL

Though Dr. James Naismith, a physical educa- tion instructor at the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School, Springfield, Massachusetts, is credited with having discov- ered modern basketball, the earliest evidence of a game resembling basketball has been found in an- cient Central and South American civilisations. In

the South American Yucatan peninsula, playing courts bounded by stone walls and set among groves of trees have been found dating back to the seventh century B.C. Overlooking the courts were sculptures of gods and other religious symbols, suggesting that the game normally took place as a part of a religious festival. The 01- mecs of Mexico played a game called ‘Pok-ta-Pok’ with a rubber ball filled with sacred plants. The object was to put the ball into the goal using the hips, thighs and knees. In the 16th century Mexico, the Aztec game of ‘Ollamalitzli’ required the players to propel a solid rubber ball through a fixed stone ring. The 11th century philosopher, Omar Khayam, made the first literary allusion to basketball in one of his epigrams which may be translated as: "You are a ball played with by fate;, a ball which God throws since the dawn of time into the catch basket." An engraving made by Brays in 1603 shows a precursor to basketball and Vieth in his Encyclopedia of Athletics (1818) details a game played in Florida in which players attempted to throw the ball into a basket attached to the top of a pole. Dr. James Naismith, however, created the modern version in December 1891 as an indoor recreation during winter for young people who showed little interest in the usual physical exercises of the day. The game has since caught on and the YMCA has been in the forefront spreading the game worldwide. The Federation Inter- nationale de Basketball Amateurs (FIBA) was formed in 1936 and following the demonstration of the sport in the Olympic Games in 1904 and 1928 by the Americans, it has been a regular feature of the Olympic programme since 1936. Charles S.Patterson, an American missionary worker employed with the YMCA , Calcutta made the first attempt to introduce the game in India in 1905. But the credit for popularising the game goes to the YMCA , Madras, which in the 1920s spread the game in schools, colleges and universities through its instructors. Mostly played by members of private clubs, the game also became popular in military units, and community and recreation centres. The first national championship for men was introduced in 1934 under the aegis of the Indian Olympic Association. It continued to. be organised by the IOA till 1950 on a biennial basis. With the for- mation of the Basketball Federation of India in February 1950 with C.C. Abraham, Principal, YMCA College, Madras as the first president and D.N. Rajanna as associate secretary, the onus of conducting the national championship was shifted to the national federation. The national championship for men then became an annual affair. Though women’s basketball was introduced in the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the first national champi-

BAAZIGAR OR INDIAN ACROBATICS

While gymnastics as a sophisticated form of acrobatics has become an accepted norm, the Whole world over,there is another kind of acrobatics,very common in the Indian streets, by a group of untrained professionals (normally a small family, which has been performing the road show ancestrally with no formal training or

coaching), which can perhaps be termed "Indian Acrobatics". These performers while entertaining crowds on the road side also earn their livelihood from such shows. Some of the common acts include tight rope walking (wherein a young female will walk across barefoot on a stretch of thin rope fastened at two ends by cross poles normally balancing a bamboo pole on her hands) and balancing a young child on a huge pole, wherein the child reaches the top of the pole, which is balanced by the male member either on his stomach, chest or head. Sometimes trained monkeys and other animals are included as a part of the fare.