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Eternal India
SPORTS
encyclopedia
become as popular as football, hockey or cricket and largely remains
confined to the urban areas like billiards.
The snooker table measures twelve-and-half-feet by six-and-
half-feet with the playing area within the cushion faces measuring
1 lft 8 1/2 inches by 5ft 10 inches with a tolerance on both dimen-
sions of plus or minus 1/2 an inch. The height of the table from the
floor to the top of the cushion rail shall be from 2ft
9
l
/
2
inches to 2 ft
10 inches. The balls shall be of an approved composition and each
ball shall weigh between 135 gms to 145 gms. The diameter of the
balls shall be 52.5 mm with a tolerance of + 0.05mm to -0.08mm.
They shall be of
equal weight within a tolerance of 3 gms per
snooker set. The cue shall not be less than three feet in length and
show no substantial departure from the generally accepted shape
and form.
SOFTBALL
An improvised version of baseball, softball
was created as an indoor game by Hannock of
the Farragut Boat Club of Chicago, Illinois,
USA. Called as Indoor Baseball, the new sport
became very popular and soon went outdoors.
The name changed to ‘Kitten Ball’, then to
‘Mush Ball’ and finally to its present name. In
its formative years the game was governed by a bewildering variety
of rules. The committee formed in 1933 to provide a standard set of
rules became the International Joint Rules Committee on Softball.
Today, the sport has one set of universally accepted rules.
Mr. Naidu (Karnataka) and Mr. Jaganathan (Hyderabad) were
responsible for bringing the game to India. The Softball Association
of India was formed in 1970 with Mr. Naidu as the founder-secre-
tary. Prior to the formation of the national federation, the game was
popular among college students, who even used to organise inter-
collegiate matches.
Mr. Jaganathan took over as secretary and provided an opportu-
nity for the Indians to play with the Americans in the American
embassy. The association is now housed in Jodhpur with about 19
state units affiliated to it.
The Indian women made their international debut by playing a
Test series against China in 1989-90 and then participated in the
Asia Cup Championships held at Manila in 1991.
With the emergence of baseball, which is more competitive in
nature, softball has taken a more recreational aspect. The rules
governing softball are the same as baseball, but the playing arena is
smaller.
The dimensions of a softball diamond are: Infield 60 feet square;
outfield 220 feet, pitching distance is 46 feet for men and 40 feet for
women. The pitching in softball is done underarm using a bigger ball
than in baseball.
SQUASH
Not a popular sport the world over it was
first played with a softball around 1817 at Har-
row. There was no recognised tournament till
the early 20th century.
In India, the first national championship
was held in 1953 with Rajkumar Narpat Singh
emerging as the champion. He went on to perform a hattrick by
retaining the title for the next two years.
Anil Nayar, who won the junior and the senior titles in the same
year in 1964 at the age of 18 won the United States Amateur squash
championships three times in-a-row from 1965 to 1967. In 1964 he
had won the Drysdale Cup, considered unofficially as the world
junior crown. R.K. Manchanda, who represented India in eight
international tournaments from 1976 to 1984, was the skipper of the
team that finished second in the Asian Squash championships at
Karachi in 1981.
Firoze Pandole, his son Dinshaw and Dinshaw's sons Darius
and Farokh form the three generations of the same family in the
history of Indian squash.
After Anil Nayar, Adrian Ezra became the second player to win
the senior and the junior national titles in the same year in 1989 at
the age of 17.
Arjuna Awards:
Maj. K.S. Jain, Anil Nayar, R.K. Manchanda,
Bhuvaneshwari Kumari.
SWIMMING AND WATER POLO
Swimming was a popular form of exercise
and recreation in many ancient lands like
Assyria, Egypt, Greece and Rome. However,
its popularity declined between 400 and 1500
A.D., as many people feared that water caused
the spread of many diseases. Swimming,
however, regained popularity in the early
1800s and organised swimming meets became common during the
mid 1800s with the Britishers showing a lot of keenness in competi-
tive swimming.
Swimming competitions for men were included in the very first
Olympiad in 1896 and women took to Olympic swimming in 1912.
The Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur (the interna-
tional body for the promotion and development of swimming) was
founded in 1908 in London. The broader canvas of swimming today
also includes diving and water polo. Diving came into the Olympic
fold in 1904 at the St. Louis Olympic Games, while water polo as a
team game for men was included in the Olympic swimming calendar
in 1900.
The origins of waterpolo can be traced back to 1869 in England
when a game was devised with a ball in water to help young Eng-
lishmen become better swimmers. The earliest pictorial depiction
of swimming dates back to 900 B.C. - drawings on the walls of the
Wadi Sari Caves in the Libyan desert. Today, swimming has also
become an adventure sport with the crossings of channels and
straits becoming the prime focus of long-distance swimming. The
crossing of the English Channel, in fact, has become a favourite
sport with many long-distance swimmers, including Indians, having
successfully achieved this feat. Much before swimming became an
organised sport in the country, two Indians, D.D. Mulji and Nalin
Chandra Malik, had represented the country in the 1928 Amsterdam
and 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games, respectively, under the
aegis of the National Swimming Association of Calcutta.
Even before the formation of a national federation, swimming
as a competitive sport was popular among the members of the
private clubs of Calcutta and Bombay. The Calcutta Swimming
Club, established in 1926, is the oldest swimming club in India. The