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SPORTS
Eternal India
encyclopedia
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.
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
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)
.