Top 10 Most Famous Sports In The World

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players each on a field at the center of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. The game is played by 120 million players in many countries, making it the world’s second most popular sport. Each team takes its turn to bat, attempting to score runs, while the other team fields. Each turn is known as an innings.

The bowler delivers the ball to the batsman who attempts to hit the ball with his bat away from the fielders so he can run to the other end of the pitch and score a run. Each batsman continues batting until he is out. The batting team continues batting until ten batsmen are out, or a specified number of overs of six balls have been bowled, at which point the teams switch roles and the fielding team comes in to bat. In professional cricket the length of a game ranges from 20 overs per side to Test cricket played over five days.

The Laws of Cricket are maintained by the International Cricket Council and the Marylebone Cricket Club with additional Standard Playing Conditions for Test matches and One Day Internationals. Cricket was first played in southern England in or before the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, it had developed to be the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being played overseas and by the mid-19th century the first international match was held. ICC, the game’s governing body, has 10 full members. The game is most popular in Australasia, England, the Indian subcontinent, the West Indies and Southern Africa.

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Basketball

Basketball is a sport played by two teams of five players on a rectangular court. The objective is to shoot a ball through a hoop 18 inches in diameter and 10 feet high mounted to a backboard at each end. Basketball is one of the world’s most popular and widely viewed sports. A team can score a field goal by shooting the ball through the basket during regular play.

A field goal scores three points for the shooting team if the player shoots from behind the three-point line, and two points if shot from in front of the line. A team can also score via free throws, which are worth one point, after the other team was assessed with certain fouls. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins, but additional time is issued when the score is tied at the end of regulation. The ball can be advanced on the court by bouncing it while walking or running or throwing it to a teammate. It is a violation to lift or drag one’s pivot foot without dribbling the ball, to carry it, or to hold the ball with both hands then resume dribbling. As well as many techniques for shooting, passing, dribbling and rebounding, basketball teams generally have player positions and offensive and defensive structures.

Traditionally, the tallest and strongest members of a team are called a center or power forward, while slightly shorter and more agile players are called small forward, and the shortest players or those who possess the best ball handling skills are called a point guard or shooting guard.

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Hockey

Field hockey, or simply hockey, is a team sport of the hockey family. The earliest origins of the sport date back to the Middle Ages in Scotland, the Netherlands, and England. The game can be played on a grass field or a turf field as well as an indoor board surface. Each team plays with eleven players including the goalie. Players use sticks made out of wood or fiber glass to hit a round, hard, rubber like ball. The length of the stick depends on the player’s individual height. There are no left hand sticks in field hockey, and only one side of the stick is allowed to be used. The uniform consist of shin-guards, cleats, skirts or shorts, and a jersey. At the turn of the 21st century, the game is played globally, with particular popularity throughout western Europe, the Indian subcontinent, and Australasia as well as the American South.

Hockey is the national sport of Pakistan, and is sometimes assumed to be India’s national sport as well, although officially India does not have a national sport. The term “field hockey” is used primarily in Canada, the United States, Europe and other regions of the world where the sport of ice hockey is more popular. During play, goal keepers are the only players who are allowed to touch the ball with any part of their body, with this only applying within the shooting circle, while field players play the ball with the flat side of their stick.

The team that scores the most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time and/or a penalty shootout, depending on the competition’s format. The governing body of hockey is the International Hockey Federation, with men and women being represented internationally in competitions including the Olympic Games, World Cup, World League, Champions Trophy and Junior World Cup, with many countries running extensive junior, senior, and masters’ club competitions.

The FIH is also responsible for organising the Hockey Rules Board and developing the rules for the sport. A popular variant of field hockey is indoor field hockey, which differs in a number of respects while embodying the primary principles of hockey. Indoor hockey is a 5-a-side variant, with a field which is reduced to approximately 40 m × 20 m. With many of the rules remaining the same, including obstruction and feet, there are several key variations – Players may not raise the ball unless shooting on goal, players may not hit the ball, and the sidelines are replaced with solid barriers which the ball will rebound off.

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Tennis

Tennis is a racquet sport that can be played individually against a single opponent or between two teams of two players each. Each player uses a racquet that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over or around a net and into the opponent’s court. The object of the game is to play the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a good return. The opponent who is unable to return the ball will not gain a point, while the opposite opponent will. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society and at all ages. The sport can be played by anyone who can hold a racquet, including wheelchair users. The modern game of tennis originated in Birmingham, England, in the late 19th century as “lawn tennis”.

It had close connections both to various field games such as croquet and bowls as well as to the older racquet sport of real tennis. During most of the 19th-century in fact, the term “tennis” referred to real tennis, not lawn tennis: for example, in Disraeli’s novel Sybil, Lord Eugene De Vere announces that he will “go down to Hampton Court and play tennis.” The rules of tennis have changed little since the 1890s. Two exceptions are that from 1908 to 1961 the server had to keep one foot on the ground at all times, and the adoption of the tie-break in the 1970s.

A recent addition to professional tennis has been the adoption of electronic review technology coupled with a point challenge system, which allows a player to contest the line call of a point. Tennis is played by millions of recreational players and is also a popular worldwide spectator sport. The four Grand Slam tournaments are especially popular: the Australian Open played on hard courts, the French Open played on red clay courts, Wimbledon played on grass courts, and the US Open played also on hard courts.

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Volleyball

Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team’s court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summer Olympic Games since 1964. A scene of volleyball play in an Erwadi village. The complete rules are extensive. But simply, play proceeds as follows: a player on one of the teams begins a ‘rally’ by serving the ball, from behind the back boundary line of the court, over the net, and into the receiving team’s court. The receiving team must not let the ball be grounded within their court.

The team may touch the ball up to 3 times but individual players may not touch the ball twice consecutively. Typically, the first two touches are used to set up for an attack, an attempt to direct the ball back over the net in such a way that the serving team is unable to prevent it from being grounded in their court. The rally continues, with each team allowed as many as three consecutive touches, until either (1): a team makes a kill, grounding the ball on the opponent’s court and winning the rally; or (2): a team commits a fault and loses the rally. The team that wins the rally is awarded a point, and serves the ball to start the next rally.

A few of the most common faults include: causing the ball to touch the ground or floor outside the opponents’ court or without first passing over the net; catching and throwing the ball; double hit: two consecutive contacts with the ball made by the same player; four consecutive contacts with the ball made by the same team; net foul: touching the net during play; foot fault: the foot crosses over the boundary line when serving. The ball is usually played with the hands or arms, but players can legally strike or push the ball with any part of the body. A number of consistent techniques have evolved in volleyball, including spiking and blocking as well as passing, setting, and specialized player positions and offensive and defensive structures.

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Table Tennis

Table tennis, also referred to as ping pong, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball back and forth across a table using a small, round bat. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net. Except for the initial serve, players must allow a ball played toward them only one bounce on their side of the table and must return it so that it bounces on the opposite side. Points are scored when a player fails to return the ball within the rules. Play is fast and demands quick reactions. Spinning the ball alters its trajectory and limits an opponent’s options, giving the hitter a great advantage.

When doing so the hitter has a better chance of scoring if the spin is successful. Table tennis is governed by the worldwide organization International Table Tennis Federation, founded in 1926. ITTF currently includes 220 member associations. The table tennis official rules are specified in the ITTF handbook. Table tennis has been an Olympic sport since 1988, with several event categories. In particular, from 1988 until 2004, these were: men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles and women’s doubles. Since 2008, a team event has been played instead of the doubles.

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Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of nine players each who take turns batting and fielding. The offense attempts to score runs by hitting a ball that is thrown by the pitcher with a bat swung by the batter, then running counter-clockwise around a series of four bases: first, second, third, and home plate. A run is scored when a player advances around the bases and returns to home plate. Players on the batting team take turns hitting against the pitcher of the fielding team, which tries to prevent runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team who reaches a base safely can later attempt to advance to subsequent bases during teammates’ turns batting, such as on a hit or by other means.

The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn batting for both teams, beginning with the visiting team, constitutes an inning. A game comprises nine innings, and the team with the greater number of runs at the end of the game wins. Baseball is the only major team sport in America with no game clock, although almost all games end in the ninth inning. Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-18th century. This game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. By the late 19th century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States.

Baseball is now popular in North America and parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and East Asia. In the United States and Canada, professional Major League Baseball teams are divided into the National League and American League, each with three divisions: East, West, and Central. The major league champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. The top level of play is similarly split in Japan between the Central League and Pacific Leagues and in Cuba between the West League and East League

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American football

American football is a sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with control of the oval-shaped football, attempts to advance down the field by running with or passing the ball, while the team without control of the ball, the defense, aims to stop their advance and take control of the ball for themselves. The offense must advance at least ten yards in four downs, or plays, or else they turn over the football to the opposing team; if they succeed, they are given a new set of four downs. Points are primarily scored by advancing the ball into the opposing team’s end zone for a touchdown or kicking the ball through the opponent’s goalposts for a field goal.

The team with the most points at the end of a game wins. American football evolved in the United States, originating from the sport of rugby football. The first game of American football was played on November 6, 1869, between two college teams, Rutgers and Princeton, under rules resembling a mix of rugby and soccer. A set of rule changes drawn up from 1880 onward by Walter Camp, the “Father of American Football,” established the snap, eleven-player teams, and the concept of downs; later rule changes legalized the forward pass, created the neutral zone, and specified the size and shape of the football.

American football as a whole is the most popular sport in the United States; professional football and college football are the most popular forms of the game, with the other major levels being high school and youth football. As of 2012, nearly 1.1 million high school athletes and 70,000 college athletes play the sport in the United States annually. The National Football League, the most popular American football league, has the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world; its championship game, the Super Bowl, ranks among the most-watched club sporting events in the world, and the league has an annual revenue of around USD $10 billion.

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Rugby

Rugby football is a sport that people play around the world. Many people play rugby in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, France, South Africa, Argentina, Japan, USA, Canada the Pacific Islands and some 100+ other countries. It is the World’s premier oval ball football and is usually just called “rugby”. Rugby football is named after a school in England called Rugby School. Legend has it that one day in 1823, a senior boy called William Webb Ellis elected to run with the ball rather than retiring to kick it as was the normal mode of play in Rugby School football matches.

“Running in” was not considered quite the done thing then but was later formalised in the laws of Rugby Football. Association Football was not formalised until 1863 and even then allowed handling of the ball, but not catching it and running with it. In the mid 1860’s an attempt was made to provide one set of laws for all football but there were irreconcilable differences.

The “hackers” went on to eventually play rugby football even though hacking was barred a few years later; while the “anti-hackers” went on to form Association Football eventually banning any handling. There are two types of rugby, called rugby unionand rugby league. The two types of rugby moved away from each other because they did not agree about the how players were treated when they were injured while playing a game. Rugby union is played by more people than rugby league, but many people play rugby league in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. In most other places, the word “rugby” means rugby union. Rugby football is played on a field by two teams of 15 people. The ball is slightly pointy at both ends.

At each end of the field there is a field goal made out of poles, shaped like the letter H in English. There is also an area called the in-goal. Players try to take the ball to the other team’s in-goal and place it on the ground. If they do that, they score a try. A try is worth five points in rugby union. After a try, the team that scored the try then has an opportunity to kick the ball through the top of the H on the other teams side. This is known as a conversion kick. A goal that is scored from a conversion kick is worth 2 points in addition to the five points of a try in rugby union.

In rugby league, a try is worth four points. After a try the scoring team, same as in rugby union, gets a chance to score a goal from a conversion kick and, once again, a goal scored from a conversion kick is worth 2 points. To try and stop the other team scoring, players try to tackle each other. Tackling in rugby means that they try to grab the other person and stop them from moving, or make them fall on the ground. The main rule for tackling in rugby is that there should be no contact with the neck. Every four years, there is a championship of the rugby union teams from countries all over the world. It is called the Rugby World Cup, and the next Rugby World Cup will be in 2015, in England.

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Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport in which competing players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course using as few strokes as possible. Golf is defined, in the rules of golf, as “playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules.” It is one of the few ball games that do not require a standardised playing area.

Instead, the game is played on a course, in general consisting of an arranged progression of either nine or 18 holes. Each hole on the course must contain a tee box to start from, and a putting green containing the actual hole. There are various other standardised forms of terrain in between, such as the fairway, rough, and hazards, but each hole on a course, and indeed among virtually all courses, is unique in its specific layout and arrangement.

Golf competition is generally played for the lowest number of strokes by an individual, known simply as stroke play, or the lowest score on the most individual holes during a complete round by an individual or team, known as match play. Stroke play is the most commonly seen format at virtually all levels of play, although variations of match play, such as “skins” games, are also seen in televised events. Other forms of scoring also exist.