World Sports

Basketball

Dec 21, 1891; Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
5 per side

One of most popular Sports 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 (46 cm ) in diameter and 10 feet (3.0 m) high mounted to a backboard Read More

Cricket

16th century; South-East England.
11 players per side

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a 22-yard (20-metre) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. Read More

Tennis

1859 and 1865, Birmingham, England.
Singles or doubles

Tennis is a racket sport that can be played individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball Read More

Badminton

19th century
Singles or doubles

Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players per side). Read More

Golf

15th century, Kingdom of Scotland.
Singles

Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not utilize a standardized playing area, and coping with the varied terrains encountered Read More

Boxing

England in 19th and early 20th centuries.
Singles

Amateur boxing is both an Olympic and Commonwealth Games sport and is a standard fixture in most international games—it also has its own World Championships. Boxing is overseen by a referee over a series of one-to-three-minute Read More

Football

19th century, England.
11 Per side

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played with a spherical ball between two teams of 11 players. It is played by approximately 250 million players in over 200 countries and dependencies, making it the world's most popular sport. Read More

Rugby

19th century
5 (with up to 8 substitutes)

Rugby union, widely known simply as rugby, is a full contact team sport that originated in England in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game Read More

Weightlifting

Ancient Greece, Egypt, China, India.
Singles

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar 14 April 1891 – 6 December 1956, also known as Babasaheb Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, politician and social reformer, who inspired the Dalit Buddhist Read More

Volleyball

1895, Holyoke, Massachusetts, US.
6

Volleyball makes its way to No. 8 in the list, with a total score of 27 points. While this may not rank very high in terms of spectator interest, it is one of the most popular recreational games in the world. Big in the developing world, particularly Brazil Read More

Table tennis

1880s, Victorian England.
Singles or doubles

Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small rackets. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net.
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Snooker

1875 in India
Single opponents, doubles or teams.

Snooker is a cue sport that originated among British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century. It is played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth (or "baize"), with pockets at each of the four corners and in the middle of each long side. Read More

Kabaddi

1930, India, South Asia.
7 (per side)

Kabaddi is a contact team sport played between two teams of seven players each. The objective of the game is for a single player on offense, referred to as a "raider", to run into the opposing team's half of a court, tag out as many of their defenders as possible Read More

Baseball

18th-century England
9

Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams who take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball which a player on the batting team tries to hit with a bat. Read More

Field hockey

19th century, England.
10 field players, 1 goal keeper.

Field hockey is a widely played team sport of the hockey family. The game can be played on grass, watered turf, artificial turf or synthetic field, as well as an indoor boarded surface. Each team plays with ten field players and a goalkeeper. Read More