Tag: history

International Cricket Council is headquartered in Dubai. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and its current name is given in 1989.

Mahatma Gandhi believed that a sport was essential for a balance between the body and the mind. However, he often emphasised that games like cricket and hockey were imported into India by the British and were replacing traditional games. They showed a colonial mindset and were a less effective education than the simple exercise of those who worked on the land.

The brilliance and skill of players like the great Dhyan Chand brought India a string of Olympic gold medals. Between 1928 and 1956, India won gold medals in six consecutive Olympic Games. During this golden age of Indian dominance, India played 24 Olympic matches, and won them all, scored 178 goals (at an average of 7.43 goals per match) and conceded only seven goals. The two other gold medals for India came in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Cricket was widely popular in England. The world’s first cricket club was formed in the year 1760s. World’s first cricket club was Hambledon club in rural Hampshire. Hambledon's great days ended when the focus shifted to new Marylebone Cricket Club formed in 1787.

Kabaddi is the national game of Bangladesh. It is an outdoor game played on a rectangular court with two teams, one on either side. It is played in 20 minute session. Bangladesh Amateur Kabaddi Federation is formed in the year 1973. The first Kabaddi test was played in Bangladesh against a team from India in 1974.

Since India had the largest viewership for the game amongst the cricket-playing nations and the largest market in the cricketing world, the games centre of gravity shifted to South Asia. This shift was
symbolised by the shifting of the ICC headquarters from London to tax-free Dubai.

Among the given options, other than first statement, remaining are true.

• Cricket in England was seasonal.
  
• The captain of the team was traditionally a batsman in Victorian England. This is because amateurs played only as batsmen as they were rich and played for pleasure. They left energetic, hardworking aspects of game to professionals.
  
• Len Hutton was the first professional Yorkshire Batsman to lead the English test team.
  
• There was a clear social hierarchy between the batsmen and the bowlers in Victorian England because rich were called amateurs and were called gentlemen who were batmen. On the other hand professionals were described as players. They even entered from different entrances.
  

Pakistan has pioneered two great advances in bowling: the doosra and the reverse swing. Both the skills were developed in response to subcontinental conditions: the doosra to counter aggressive
batsmen with heavy modern bats who were threatening to make finger-spin obsolete and reverse swing to move the ball in on
dusty, unresponsive wickets under clear skies.