Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India encyclopedia

SPORTS

The game flourished in England in the 18th cen- tury and the first recorded evidence of a eleven-a- side match dates back to 1697 in Surrey for a stake of 50 guineas. The first match between two county sides was in 1719 between Londoners and Kents- men. Though the Hambledon Cricket Club was the

tional Master and qualified for the world zonal championship. Aaron scored victories over many Grand Masters, like Woolman, Steilberg and Portisch. In order to improve the standard of the game, the national cham- pionship was divided into two categories in 1967. The preliminary round was the National ‘B\ and the main draw the National ‘A’. The first National ‘A’ was conducted in Poona in 1968 with L. Subbarayan of Karnataka and Mark Nelson as the tournament directors. While 14 players qualified for this meet from the National ‘B’ another six (the first six from the previous nationals) were directly seeded. Rusi Madan of Bombay won the first National ‘A’, which with the National ‘B’, has now become an annual feature. To make the game popular among juniors, the first national stu- dents’ championship was held in 1960. However, a national junior championship began to be conducted on a regular basis only from 1970. This, in fact, threw up a host of talent like Raja Ravishekar, Sai Prakash, Dibyendu Barua, D.V. Prasad, Pravin M. Thipsay and, of course, Vishwanathan Anand. Some of the above players have become International Masters by fulfilling the FIDE norms. Pravin Thipsay also held a GM norm in 1985, but could not achieve the title. The first national championship for women which was intro- duced in 1973 and conducted in Bangalore, was won by Vasanthi Khadilkar of Maharashtra. The Khadilkar sisters (Vasanthi, Rohini and Jayashree) dominated the initial phase of women’s chess in India and shared the national title amongst themselves a number of times. In 1978, India for the first time hosted the Asian Zonal Champi- onship for women at Bangalore and Jayashree Khadilkar earned the distinction of becoming the first Indian International Woman Mas- ter. During 1977/78, India also for the first time hosted an interna- tional tournament involving Grand Masters, in Trichy. In 1982 in an international tournament held in Bangalore for the first time five Grand Masters and many International Masters participated in a tournament in India. The tournament was won by Khuzwin of the erstwhile Soviet Union. The year 1987 saw women Grand Masters participating for the first time in India in a tournament held in Madras. The title in this tournament was shared by Nana Alexan- dra and Sophia (both from the erstwhile Soviet Union). In the meantime, Karnataka’s D.V. Prasad made a mark on the international scene by becoming the Commonwealth champion. The name of Vishwanathan Anand began ringing a bell as he started making big strides, both at the world junior and senior levels. The first Indian to be the highest rated internationally, Anand qualified for the Candidates Matches (a tournament from which one candi- date emerges to challenge the world champion) from the Manila Inter Zonal in 1990, but lost in the semi-finals to Anatoly Karpov. At the national level, a sub-junior tournament was introduced in 1975. But, at present, national championships are conducted under various age group categories. CRICKET The evolution of cricket, by far the most popular mass spectator sport in India, can be traced back to 12th century England. Thanks to the television medium, cricket (especially the one-day variety) has almost become a passion with the Indian masses, and when a one- day match involving India is telecast, people even in rural parts of the country can be found glued to their T.V. sets.

first cricket club to be formed in the country, the Marylebone Cricket Club founded in 1787 became more popular. Headquartered at Lord’s in St. John’s Wood, London and popularly known as MCC, it is today considered the ‘Mecca’ of cricket. The first big match in England was between Kent and All Eng- land on 18th June, 1744 at the Artillery ground and the full score- board of the match has been still preserved. The Imperial Cricket Conference(which subsequently changed its nomenclature to the International Cricket Conference at the suggestion of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and is known in short as ICC) was inau- gurated at Lord’s on 15th June, 1909, though what is known as Test match was played by an English team against an Australian team in Australia in 1876/87 and the first Test in England was played in 1880. A friendly match between two teams of visiting sailors at a seaport in Kutch in 1725 is the first recorded evidence of a cricket match played on Indian soil. Cricket became a more organised sport but restricted only to Europeans (mainly Britishers) with the for- mation of the Calcutta Club at a venue known as Eden Garden in 1792. There is, however, a record of a match played between a Military XI and Island XI in Bombay in 1797. The Orient Cricket Club, formed by the Parsis in Bombay in 1848, was the first non-British cricket club in the country but this club did not last long. The Parsis, who took to the game in right earnest, formed the Young Zoroastrians Club, which still exists. The Englishmen in Madras also formed the Madras Cricket Club in 1848 and played on island strips but from 1864 onwards started playing at Chepauk. The first cricket club in India by an Indian was the Presidency College Cricket Club started by an Indian professor. The first century on Indian soil was scored- in 1804 by Robert Vanisiltart of the Old Etonians in a match played at Calcutta between Old Etonians and Gentlemen of Calcutta. The Parsis then established a tradition of playing matches against English teams. The first two unofficial tours by teams from India comprised only Parsis. A series of two matches was also started between the Europeans and the Parsis in India on an annual basis from 1892 and the matches were played in Bombay and Pune. The Bombay Union Hindu Cricket Club was formed in 1906 and the tournament became a triangular affair from 1907. The Muslim Gym- khana joined the tournament in 1912 and made it a quadrangular af- fair. The tournament ultimately became a pentangular with the ad- dition of a Rest team following the formation of the Board of Control for Cricket in India in 1927/28. The tournament was abandoned during 1945 following an agitation by Mahatma Gandhi stating that it was communal in character. The first unofficial tour of an “All-India” team to England in 1911 was led by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. The Maha- raja, in fact, was the chief patron of cricket in the country and arranged for many cricketers from England to play in India. The Ma- haraja with A.S. De Mello, Lord Harris and R.E. Grant Govan laid the foundation for the formation of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) .