SPORTS and it's VARIOUS TYPES

 SPORTS 

Sports pertain to any sort of activity (physical or mental) that aims to use, maintain or improve skills and physical as well as mental abilities while providing enjoyment to the participants. Sports can, through casual or organized participation, improve one's physical health. Hundreds of sports exist, from those between single contestants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals. In certain sports such as racing, many contestants may compete, simultaneously or consecutively, with one winner; in others, the contest (a match) is between two sides, each attempting to exceed the other. Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure one winner and one loser. A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs.

Our blog pertains to different categories of sports that have gained popularity not only in India but also in different parts of the world in both indoor and out door aspects. They are:

1.Hockey:  Hockey, the national sports of India, is a sport in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuvers a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick. There are many types of hockey such as bandy, field hockey, ice hockey and rink hockey. In most of the world, the term hockey by itself refers to field hockey, while in Canada, the United States, Russia and most of Eastern and Northern Europe, the term usually refers to ice hockey.

There are different subtypes of hockey in different regions of the world. They are as follows:-

1. Bandy:- Bandy is played with a ball on a football pitch-sized ice arena (bandy rink), typically outdoors, and with many rules similar to association football. It is played professionally in Russia and Sweden. The sport is recognized by the IOC; its international governing body is the Federation of International Bandy.

2. Field hockey:- Field hockey is played on gravel, natural grass, or sand-based or water-based artificial turf, with a small, hard ball approximately 73 mm (2.9 in) in diameter. The game is popular among both males and females in many parts of the world, particularly in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina. In most countries, the game is played between single-sex sides, although they can be mixed-sex.

3. Ice hockey:- Ice hockey is played between two teams of skaters on a large flat area of ice, using a three-inch-diameter (76.2 mm) vulcanized rubber disc called a puck. This puck is often frozen before high-level games to decrease the amount of bouncing and friction on the ice. The game is played all over North America, Europe and to varying extents in many other countries around the world. It is the most popular sport in Canada, Finland, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Ice hockey is the national sport of Latvia and the national winter sport of Canada. Ice hockey is played at a number of levels, by all ages.

4. Ice sledge hockey:- Ice sledge hockey or para ice hockey is a form of ice hockey designed for players with physical disabilities affecting their lower bodies. Players sit on double-bladed sledges and use two sticks; each stick has a blade at one end and small picks at the other. Players use the sticks to pass, stickhandle and shoot the puck, and to propel their sledges. The rules are very similar to IIHF ice hockey rules.

5. Roller hockey:- Inline hockey is a variation of roller hockey very similar to ice hockey, from which it is derived. Inline hockey is played by two teams, consisting of four skaters and one goalie, on a dry rink divided into two halves by a center line, with one net at each end of the rink. The game is played in three 15-minute periods with a variation of the ice hockey off-side rule. Icings are also called, but are usually referred to as illegal clearing. The governing body is the IIHF, as for ice hockey, but some leagues and competitions do not follow the IIHF regulations, in particular USA Inline and Canada Inline.

6. Steet hockey:- Also known as road hockey, this is a dry-land variant of ice and roller hockey played year-round on a hard surface (usually asphalt). A ball is usually used instead of a puck, and protective equipment is not usually worn.

Equipment:-

• Shoulder pads

• Jockstrap with cup pocket and protective cup

• Hockey stick, Puck or ball

2.Chess: Chess is a recreational and competitive board game played between two players. It is sometimes called Western or international chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi. The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from similar, much older games of Indian and Persian origin. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments. Chess is an abstract strategy game and involves no hidden information. It is played on a square chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player (one controlling the white pieces, the other controlling the black pieces) controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in "check") and there is no way for it to escape. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw.

Rules:- The rules of chess are published by FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs), chess's international governing body, in its Handbook. Rules published by national governing bodies, or by unaffiliated chess organizations, commercial publishers, etc., may differ in some details. FIDE's rules were most recently revised in 2018.

Setup:- Chess pieces are divided into two different colored sets. While the sets may not be literally white and black (e.g. the light set may be a yellowish or off-white color, the dark set may be brown or red), they are always referred to as "white" and "black". The players of the sets are referred to as White and Black, respectively. Each set consists of 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns.

Movement:- Each piece has its own way of moving.

• The king moves one square in any direction. There is also a special move called castling that involves moving the king and a rook. The king is the most valuable piece — attacks on the king must be immediately countered, and if this is impossible, immediate loss of the game ensues (see Check and checkmate below).

• A rook can move any number of squares along a rank or file, but cannot leap over other pieces. Along with the king, a rook is involved during the king's castling move.

• A bishop can move any number of squares diagonally, but cannot leap over other pieces.

• A queen combines the power of a rook and bishop and can move any number of squares along a rank, file, or diagonal, but cannot leap over other pieces.

• A knight moves to any of the closest squares that are not on the same rank, file, or diagonal. (Thus the move forms an "L"-shape: two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically.) The knight is the only piece that can leap over other pieces.

• A pawn can move forward to the unoccupied square immediately in front of it on the same file, or on its first move it can advance two squares along the same file, provided both squares are unoccupied (black dots in the diagram). A pawn can capture an opponent's piece on a square diagonally in front of it by moving to that square (black crosses). A pawn has two special moves: the en passant capture and promotion.

OBJECTIVE:

The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent; this occurs when the opponent's king is in check, and there is no legal way to get it out of check. It is never legal for a player to make a move that puts or leaves the player's own king in check. In casual games, it is common to announce "check" when putting the opponent's king in check, but this is not required by the rules of chess and is not usually done in tournaments.

End of game:- 

"Win:- A game can be won in the following ways:

• Checkmate: The king is in check and the player has no legal move. (See check and checkmate above)

• Resignation: A player may resign, conceding the game to the opponent.Most tournament players consider it good etiquette to resign in a hopeless position.

• Win on time: In games with a time control, a player wins if the opponent runs out of time, even if the opponent has a superior position, as long as the player has a theoretical possibility to checkmate the opponent were the game to continue.

• Forfeit: A player who cheats, violates the rules, or violates the rules of conduct specified for the particular tournament can be forfeited. Occasionally, both players are forfeited.

Draw:- There are several ways a game can end in a draw:

• Stalemate: If the player to move has no legal move, but is not in check, the position is a stalemate, and the game is drawn.

• Dead position: If neither player is able to checkmate the other by any legal sequence of moves, the game is drawn.

• Draw by agreement: In tournament chess, draws are most commonly reached by mutual agreement between the players. The correct procedure is to verbally offer the draw, make a move, then start the opponent's clock. Traditionally, players have been allowed to agree to a draw at any point in the game, occasionally even without playing a move; in recent years efforts have been made to discourage short draws, for example by forbidding draw offers before move thirty.

• Threefold repetition: This most commonly occurs when neither side is able to avoid repeating moves without incurring a disadvantage. In this situation, either player can claim a draw; this requires the players to keep a valid written record of the game so that the claim can be verified by the arbiter if challenged. The three occurrences of the position need not occur on consecutive moves for a claim to be valid. The addition of the fivefold repetition rule in 2014 requires the arbiter to intervene immediately and declare the game a draw after five occurrences of the same position, consecutive or otherwise, without requiring a claim by either player. FIDE rules make no mention of perpetual check; this is merely a specific type of draw by threefold repetition."

3.Cricket: Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the center of which is a 22-yard (20-metre) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striking the ball bowled at the wicket with the bat (and running between the wickets), while the bowling and fielding side tries to prevent this (by preventing the ball from leaving the field, and getting the ball to either wicket) and dismiss each batter (so they are "out"). Means of dismissal include being bowled, when the ball hits the stumps and dislodges the bails, and by the fielding side either catching the ball after it is hit by the bat and before it hits the ground, or hitting a wicket with the ball before a batter can cross the crease in front of the wicket. When ten batters have been dismissed, the innings ends and the teams swap roles. The game is adjudicated by two umpires, aided by a third umpire and match referee in international matches.

Forms of cricket range from Twenty20, with each team batting for a single innings of 20 overs, to Test matches played over five days. The field is usually circular or oval in shape and the edge of the playing area is marked by a boundary, which may be a fence, part of the stands, a rope, a painted line or a combination of these; the boundary must if possible be marked along its entire length.

In the approximate center of the field is a rectangular pitch (see image, below) on which a wooden target called a wicket is sited at each end; the wickets are placed 22 yards (20 m) apart. The pitch is a flat surface 10 feet (3.0 m) wide, with very short grass that tends to be worn away as the game progresses (cricket can also be played on artificial surfaces, notably matting). Each wicket is made of three wooden stumps topped by two bails.

Why is Cricket so popular?

1. Cricket is an Easy – and Fun – Sport

The only thing needed to play cricket is a bat and a ball and a couple of friends to mark the beginning of play and is also extremely easy to understand the rules and abide by it.

2. Cricket Has a Lot of Benefits

It helps in improved hand-eye coordination, adaptability, cardiovascular health and wellness, enhances concentration and agility.

4.Table Tennis: Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small rackets. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net. The main objective is to score the maximum point possible. Even in matches, the game is of 11 points.

Table tennis has been an Olympic sport since 1988.

Equipments :

Ball

The international rules specify that the game is played with a sphere having a mass of 2.7 grams (0.095 oz.) and a diameter of 40 millimeters (1.57 in).

Table

The table is 2.74 m (9.0 ft.) long, 1.525 m (5.0 ft.) wide, and 76 cm (2.5 ft.) high with any continuous material so long as the table yields a uniform bounce of about 23 cm (9.1 in) when a standard ball is dropped onto it from a height of 30 cm (11.8 in), or about 77%.

Racket

Players are equipped with a laminated wooden racket covered with rubber on one or two sides depending on the grip of the player. The wooden portion of the racket, often referred to as the "blade"

 

Popularity

Table tennis is hugely popular as a recreational sport. There is at least one tt-table in the majority of companies. It is seen as a great stress buster for employees. Also, there is a scope for learners as it is a new game in our country and offers huge opportunities to the newcomers. 

Famous Players

• Sharath Kamal Achanta

• Manika Batra

• Sathiyan Gnanasekaran

• Mouma Das

5.Football: Association football more commonly known as football or soccer, a sport played between 2 slides of 11 players with a spherical ball. Football is the world’s most popular sport.

Why is Football so popular?

Apart from having high-quality teams worldwide, what makes football delicious is that most of the top teams are different from each other in terms of style of play. This is something that I think is unique to football.

For example, Barcelona plays a passing, possession-based football characterized by a high degree of close control. Real Madrid plays counter-attacking football suited to their fast and athletic wingers and forward. This makes domination in football much harder. It is almost impossible for a team to dominate World Football for a prolonged period. A good example is how Australia dominated world cricket for around 15 years in the ’90s and 2000s or West Indies before that.

FOOTBALL-ESSENTIAL SKILLS:

1.learn to dribble

2.learn to pass

3.learn to shoot

4.learn to defend

5.learn to head

6.learn to juggle

7.learn to use weak foot

Finally, our blog wants to include an honorable mention of  Lt.Mr. Chuni Goswami for his contribution in not only in Football but also cricket with a mere photo of the legend.