A guide to traveling the world featuring information on embassies, business, societies, culture, food, education, and much more.
Information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, etc. of entities across the world; government site maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States
Reference works, Scholarly journals, Trade publications, and important General interest magazines covering core academic subject areas. Help Guide available.
Indian Sports
Cricket commands the greatest following among all the sports in India. Other sports played in the country are hockey, soccer (known as football in India), tennis, table tennis, badminton, basketball, volleyball, chess, golf, archery, weight-lifting, swimming, skating, kabaddi, kho-kho, and some forms of traditional martial arts like the Kalari Payattu, one of the oldest in the world. Cricket has almost become a religion in India, with the whole country coming to a stand still whenever an important match takes place. One can see youngsters, beginning at around the age of six or seven, playing cricket just about anywhere.
The only sport that sees a full stadium in India is cricket. Star cricketers are idolized and often receive millions of rupees for product endorsements. Every young boy aspires to be a Sachin Tendulkar, regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in history and sometimes called "The Little Master," or a Mahendra Singh Dhoni, current captain of the Indian Twenty20 and ODI teams. Other current cricket heroes are Sourav Ganguly, a captain who led India to the highest number of Test match victories, and Rahul Dravid, one of the world’s top ten batsmen with a record 9,000 runs in Test cricket. Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar are retired stars that still have a strong fan base.
Hockey is the national sport in India, but cricket has the largest and most passionate following. Soccer, basketball, volleyball, tennis, and badminton are other favorite spectator professional sports. Indians have been world champions in some sports like chess, tennis, billiards, tennis, shooting, weightlifting, track and field, women’s field hockey, and rugby.
