History Of Sports.

History of sports can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. During those days admiration for the healthy human body is shown in their sculpture and makes almost a religion of competitive athletics. It was their custom on solemn occasions, including even funerals, to engage in races. This passion leads to the world's first athletic fixture - the games at Olympia, established according to tradition in the year 776 BC and held every four years. At the beginning this was a one-day athletic meeting with a single competitive event. The entire day is taken up with heats for a running race - a sprint the length of the stadium, the equivalent of about 200 meters. In later years more events are added.
In the sports history, the important events that are included in the Olympic Games are discus throw, javelin throw, long jump, boxing, wrestling, chariots, horse racing and a challenge to test all-round ability - the pentathlon. The pentathlon actually starts with contest in four criteria - running, jumping, throwing the discus and the javelin. The winners from these encounters have to meet in a fifth and exclusive contest, wrestling. However, the winner receives a simple token of their victory, a garland of fresh olive to wear on the head. This is essentially a religious festival, in honor of the greatest of the Greek gods, Zeus whose sanctuary is at Olympia.
Looking back to the origin of sports during the Victorian period, sports developed in the context of industrial capitalism and class equality. In this period sport became linked to a moral code defined by the middle classes. Nationwide sport developed through the influence of technology, the public schools and the national governing bodies. Amateur and professional sport became increasingly separated. However, during those years, working class sport in school was limited largely to drill and therapeutic gymnastics.
In the history of sports during the World Wars, there was steady growth in the participation of sports continued for all classes of society, although working class were least involved. Most sports during those years were class orientated. Football (in all its versions) continued to increase in popularity and by the 1930s, was the most popular sporting activity. There was also little government involvement in sport, apart from physical education in schools.
Commercialization of sport expanded rapidly, especially the provision for spectator sport.Sports history can also be dated back to the 19th century; as an improved standard of living in this century has enabled greater participation in sport for most social groups. However, professional sports people had a long battle to be given fair rewards. An advisory Sports Council was established in 1965 and the independent executive Sports Council in 1972. Moreover, physical education was established in the 1944 Act for its educational value. There has been an increasing influence of market forces on schools, physical education, sports facilities and sport. Today, sport, as a part of a national culture, now extended to the majority of the population.

Dhanraj Pillay Calls for Indian Coach for the National Hockey Team

Unhappy that a Dutch has been made the new chief coach for the men's national team, legendary hockey player Dhanraj Pillay said an Indian would have been the best option for the post.In association with Hockey India (HI), the Sports Authority of India (SAI) has named that Paul van Ass will take charge of the Indian team following Terry Walsh's ouster last year.
                                                                   "An Indian coach is the best option for the country. Language barrier is a big problem for the boys. I have seen it myself. In my own team, Uttar Pradesh Wizards, I saw how much problem we had. Our Indian players don't understand their English because of their accent," Dhanraj told IANS in an interview.

The 46-year-old is the technical director of Hockey India League (HIL) franchise UP Wizards where Dutchman Roelant Oltmans is the head coach.The former India captain said the fortunes of Indian hockey have not changed despite the federation bringing in foreign coaches for quite a while.

"In the last 10 years, have the foreign coaches taken the team to another level? No. They are still there. The level has not gone up. It is the same when Indian coaches were there during my playing days," said Dhanraj, whose illustrious international career spanned from 1989 to 2004.
"If HI, the government, the sports ministry are thinking that foreign coaches are better... let us see how good the new coach will be."
Pillay earned 339 international caps, and led India to the 1998 Asian Games gold and the 2003 Asia Cup win. He was a prolific centre forward and is the only hockey player in the world to have played in four World Cups, four Olympics, four Champions Trophy and four Asian Games.
Asked about the appointment of van Ass, who led the Netherlands to an Olympic silver in 2012 in London, the four-time Olympian refused to comment. "I will talk later when the time is right."

Michael Jordan: A Global Icon

Mid-jump, Michael Jordan appears as though he can actually take flight. From his famous basket shots that earned him the nickname ‘Air’ Jordan, to the millions of fans who emulate him, Michael Jordan transcended the sport of basketball to become one of the 20th century’s greatest global icons.
The forces that shaped Michael’s extraordinary talent began at an early age. He was born into a middle-class black family in Brooklyn, New York that moved to Wilmington, North Carolina later that year. The Jordan family was very disciplined. Michael learned at an early age to abide by his parents’ rules. His father and mother, James and Deloris Jordan, taught their children to work hard and not waste their talent. Michael’s father was a military man with a strong sense of order, and he pushed his sons hard in athletics. Michael’s parents continually raised their expectations for their children, letting them know that more was expected from them.
                                                                     The forces that shaped Michael’s extraordinary talent began at an early age. He was born into a middle-class black family in Brooklyn, New York that moved to Wilmington, North Carolina later that year. The Jordan family was very disciplined. Michael learned at an early age to abide by his parents’ rules.
 His father and mother, James and Deloris Jordan, taught their children to work hard and not waste their talent. Michael’s father was a military man with a strong sense of order, and he pushed his sons hard in athletics. Michael’s parents continually raised their expectations for their children, letting them know that more was expected from them.

"I want to be the best, it's not about the ranking, it's about being consistent"

Nehwal was born in Hisar, Haryana to the couple Harvir Singh and Usha Rani. For most of her life, she grew up there completing her schooling in the campus school of CCS HAU. It was only later that she shifted to Hyderabad along with her family. While she was still young, Saina Nehwal aced another sport apart from badminton and that was Karate.  Not many might know that she is a brown belt champion in Karate.
                                                          After moving to Hyderabad, Saina trained in the Pullela Gopichand badminton academy, a training academy that helped a great deal in polishing her skills and making her a better player than she already was.  She began winning tournaments right from the year 2004. She won the junior badminton championship in 2004 and later again in 2005. In 2009, she won her first super series title.
From 2010 to 2011, Saina won many other super series, such as the Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia open series and the Swiss open as well. 2012, however will be the most memorable year for India as well as Saina when she became the first Indian woman to win a medal for badminton at the London Olympics. And after that, she’s only been winning more super series, among which the Denmark, Australia and the Indian grand prix are a few. As of now, Saina ranks number 1 in the world badminton championship, and that’s a first as well - she’s the first Indian woman badminton player to be ranked first.

The Legend Of chess Board:-Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand,born December 11, 1969,Chennai,Indian chess master who won the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE; international chess federation) world championship in 2000, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2012.
Anand learned to play chess from his mother when he was 6 years old. By the time he was 14, Anand had won the Indian National Sub-Junior Championship with a perfect score of nine wins in nine games. At age 15 he became the youngest Indian to earn the international master title. The following year, he won the first of three consecutive national championships. At age 17 Anand became the first Asian to win a world chess title when he won the 1987 FIDE World Junior Championship, which is open to players who have not reached their 20th birthday by January 1 of the tournament year. Anand followed up that victory by earning the international grandmaster title in 1988.
                                     In 1991 Anand won his first major international chess tournament, finishing ahead of world champion Garry Kasparov and former world champion Anatoly Karpov. For the first time since the American Bobby Fischer abandoned the title in 1975, a non-Russian had emerged as a favourite to become world chess champion.
Throughout the 1990s Anand vied with Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik for position at the top of FIDE’s official chess rating list. Anand’s first attempt to win FIDE’s world chess championship ended in 1991, when he lost in the quarter finals to Karpov in the FIDE Knockout World Chess Championship. Because of the unusual format of the event, involving a series of short matches with quick time controls, it was boycotted by many of the top players.

The phenomenal MC MARY KOM.

Play, or its Hindi equivalent, khel, is the verb Mary Kom uses. She could be referring to a tournament, “when I played national”, her stance, “I play southpaw”, or her weight category, “I must play in 51kg in the Olympics.” But there is something deeper when Kom says it. Childbirth and child-rearing, that is life. Lifting yourself out of poverty, fulfilling the duties of a wife, a daughter, an eldest sister, that is life. Boxing is so much; but still it is play.

                                 She is in the ring right now, and to be ringside when Mary Kom is in action is to feel the kinetic heat of boxing. It is molecular. She is padding against a man whom, a little while ago, in his spectacles, sweater and moustache, I took for a government officer. Now, shorn of the first two, he has transformed himself into a provocateur, a matador. He is baiting Mary, taunting her with words and jabs in the face. When their heads come together, their spit and sweat fall on each other, the blazing whites of their eyes are falling into each other’s. Kom is 5ft 2in officially, an inch more in her own estimate, but looks smaller—even more so in her headgear. Small, but taut: a packet of tensile strength.
Her muscles must be on fire. Counting her rounds against the bag, the mirror and the other women at the camp, national- and international-level boxers, she has completed the equivalent of two full-length competition bouts. Those girls were heavier and taller. This is just as well because when women’s boxing debuts at the 2012 Olympics, Mary must play taller opponents, who will have a longer reach. Most of her championship victories have come as a pinweight boxer, 46kg, whereas in London the lightest class, flyweight, is 51kg.
But next to Mary, these other girls were ponderous. Their feet were sluggish, their positioning not so clever. She could fight with her guard down, testing her reflexes by offering them her bare chin as a target, and counter-attacking in angles unfamiliar to boxers who take the orthodox stance.
All around the gym the girls furtively watched her. They covet her low-gravity wound-up springiness, her pure petite explosiveness. They would love to lunge so wide and fast, and never need to wrestle or go to the ropes. Aggression is her hallmark, and it makes her exhilarating to watch.

“Yeh leh Mary,” Mr Bhaskar Bhatt goads her, “take this. And this.” This too is the play of boxing.

The Unforgetable victory of Team India :-2011

The 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup Final was played between India and Sri Lanka at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on 2 April 2011. This was the 10th ICC Cricket World Cup. India won the match by six wickets, its second World Cup victory, having previously won in 1983.
 India became the third nation to have won the World Cup more than once, along with Australia and the West Indies. This was the first World Cup where both the finalists were Asian teams. This was the second time in World Cup history that a host nation won the World Cup Final and the first time to win on their home ground.
              Sri Lanka was a co-host when it won the 1996 Cup, but the final match was played in Lahore, Pakistan.In the stadium, the match was watched by 42,000 spectators and on TV, the final was watched by 135 million viewers in India.largely retained the same team it had in the semi-final against Pakistan, with just one change. Ashish Nehra, left-arm medium pacer, had suffered a finger fracture while fielding in that match, and he was replaced by another pacer, Sreesanth. India was widely rated as having the strongest batting line-up in the tournament, and chose to back this strength throughout the campaign by playing seven batsmen and four bowlers. Due to Yuvraj Singh performing well with both bat and ball in the tournament, India could afford to play with only four specialist bowlers. Yuvraj bowled his full quota of 10 overs in many matches, including the semi-final against Pakistan.
Among the four bowling slots, Zaheer Khan was the pace spearhead supported in most matches by Munaf Patel, while Harbhajan Singh was the regular off-spinner. The fourth slot was taken by different bowlers in different matches, including Sreesanth, Nehra, leg-spinner Piyush Chawla, or off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin. The captain had chosen Nehra over Ashwin in the match against Pakistan also. Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni had then said he preferred having three seamers.because it gave him more options. He already had proven spinners in Harbhajan and Yuvraj, and could call upon many other Indian players who can bowl part-time spin (including Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, and Virender Sehwag).

 Scoring:-
Sri Lanka started the innings slowly, constrained by good bowling from Zaheer Khan and committed fielding from Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, and Virat Kohli inside the 30-yard circle. Zaheer began with three consecutive maidens and the wicket of Upul Tharanga, conceding only six runs in his five-over spell.^[13] Sri Lankan opener Tillakaratne Dilshan was bowled by Harbhajan Singh when a delivery carried on to the stumps after deflecting off his gloves. Captain Kumara Sangakkara came in after Tharanga's dismissal, and was building a solid foundation with Dilshan before the latter was dismissed. Mahela Jayawardene came to the crease when Sri Lanka were 60/2 in the 17th over. Sangakkara and Mahela went about the task of consolidating the innings, but eventually Sangakkara was caught behind by Dhoni at 48. New batsman Thilan Samaraweera was adjudged not out by the umpire when a ball hit his thigh pad off the bowling of Yuvraj Singh. The Indians decided to review the decision and he was ultimately given out. Chamara Kapugedera, who was playing his first World Cup match, was caught off a deceptive slower ball by Zaheer Khan. Jayawardene, meanwhile, continued with his quality batting, ultimately scoring 103 not out from 88 balls in a high-class batting display. Helped by the hard-hitting of Nuwan Kulasekara and Thisara Perera, Sri Lanka scored 91 runs in the last 10 overs, including 63 in the batting powerplay (45–50 overs) to take the score to 274/6.

               

Jersey No.10:- Lionel MESSI:-The Star Player Of FCB.

Lionel Andrés "Leo" Messi  born 24 June 1987,is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward for Spanish club Barcelona and the Argentina national team. Often considered the best player in the world and rated by many in the sport as the greatest of all time, Messi is the only football player in history to win the FIFA Ballon d'Or four times, all of which he won consecutively, and the first player to win three Euorpan golden shoe. With Barcelona he has won seven La Liga titles and four UEFA Champions League titles, as well as three Copa del Rey titles. A prolific goalscorer, Messi holds the Guinness World Records titles for most goals scored in La Liga (290), a La Liga season (50), a calendar year (91), a Champions League match (five), and most Champions League seasons (five).

Born and raised in central Argentina, Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency as a child. At age 13, he relocated to Spain to join Barcelona, who agreed to pay for his medical treatment. After a fast progression through Barcelona's youth academy, Messi made his competitive debut aged 17 in October 2004.
              Despite being injury-prone during his early career, he established himself as an integral player for the club within the next three years, finishing 2007 as a finalist for both the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year award, a feat he repeated the following year. His first uninterrupted campaign came in the 2008–09 season, during which he helped Barcelona achieve the first treble in Spanish football.
At 22 years old, Messi won the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year award by record voting margins.
Three successful seasons followed, with Messi winning three consecutive FIFA Ballons d'Or, including an unprecedented fourth. His personal best campaign to date was the 2011–12 season, in which he set the La Liga and European records for most goals scored in a single season, while establishing himself as Barcelona's all-time top scorer in official competitions in March 2012. He again struggled with injury during the following two seasons, twice finishing second for the Ballon d'Or behind Cristiano Ronaldo, his perceived career rival. Messi regained his best form during the 2014–15 campaign, breaking the all-time goalscoring records in both La Liga and the Champions League in November 2014, and led Barcelona to a historic second treble.

Jersey No.15: VIRAT KHOLI :- The New God of Cricket.

Virat Kholi born 5 November 1988, is an Indian international cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and occasional right-arm medium pace bowler. He is the current captain of the Indian team in Test cricket and vice-captain in 20 Over formats. In the Indian Premier League (IPL), he captains the Royal Challengers Bangalore.
                After representing Delhi at various age-group levels and domestic cricket, Kohli captained India Under-19s to victory at the 2008 Under-19 World Cup in Malaysia. A few months later, he made his ODI debut for India against Sri Lanka. Initially having played as a reserve batsman in the Indian team, he soon established himself as a regular in the middle-order in ODIs. He was part of the Indian squad that won the 2011 World Cup. Kohli played his first Test in 2011 against the West Indies at Kingston. By 2013, he shrugged off the tag of "ODI specialist" with Test hundreds in Australia and South Africa. The same year, he also reached the number one spot in the ICC rankings for ODI batsmen for the first time. He has also found success in the Twenty20 format, winning the Man of the Tournament at the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 in Bangladesh. Later that year, he became the top-ranked T20I batsman in the ICC rankings.

 YOUTH AND DOMESTIC CARRER:- 

Kohli first played for Delhi Under-15 team in October 2002 in the 2002–03 Polly Umrigar Trophy. He was the leading run-getter for his team in that tournament with 172 runs at an average of 34.40.He became the captain of the team for the 2003–04 Polly Umrigar Trophy and scored 390 runs in 5 innings at an average of 78 including two centuries and two fifties. In late-2004, he was selected in the Delhi Under-17 team for the 2003–04 Vijay Merchant Trophy. He scored 470 runs in four matches at an average of 117.50 with two hundreds and top-score of 251. Delhi Under-17s won the 2004–05 Vijay Merchant Trophy in which Kohli finished as the highest run-scorer with 757 runs from 7 matches at an average of 84.11 with two centuries.In February 2006, he made his List A debut for Delhi against Services but did not get to bat.