Appearance
13.11 — Sport
Terms, dimensions, trophies and records. Live records change; the ones here are chosen because they are historical or structural and will still be true next year.
Cricket
How long is a cricket pitch? 22 yards, or 20.12 m — one chain, an old surveying unit. Ten square chains make an acre.
Who writes the Laws of Cricket? The MCC, a private members' club in London, since 1788. Cricket is the only global sport whose rulebook belongs to a club.
How many ways can a batter be out? Ten. Bowled, caught, LBW, run out, stumped, hit wicket, handled the ball, obstructing the field, hit the ball twice, and timed out.
Which dismissal has happened only once in international cricket? Timed out — Angelo Mathews, 2023.
What is a maiden, a duck and a googly? An over with no runs off the bat; a batter out without scoring; and a leg spinner's delivery bowled with the back of the hand so it turns the wrong way.
What is a golden duck and a hat-trick? Out first ball; and three wickets in three consecutive deliveries, which need not be in the same over.
When was the first Test match, and between whom? 1877, Australia v England at Melbourne. Australia won by 45 runs — and won the centenary rematch in 1977 by exactly the same margin.
Where does the Ashes name come from? A mock obituary in 1882 announcing the death of English cricket, with the ashes to be taken to Australia.
When was the first Cricket World Cup, and who won? 1975, in England, won by the West Indies, who also won in 1979.
When did India win the World Cup? 1983 under Kapil Dev, 2011 under M. S. Dhoni, and the T20 World Cups in 2007 and 2024.
What is Don Bradman's Test average, and why is it extraordinary? 99.94. The next best in history are in the high fifties, which makes it the most extreme outlier statistic in any sport. He needed four runs in his last innings and was out for a duck.
Who has the most Test wickets, and the most international runs? Muttiah Muralitharan with 800 Test wickets; Sachin Tendulkar with the most international runs and 100 international centuries.
What is the highest individual Test score, and the highest first-class score? Brian Lara, 400 not out and 501 not out — he holds both.
Who took 19 wickets in a single Test? Jim Laker, 1956, out of a possible 20.
What is DRS and umpire's call? The Decision Review System, and the rule that an on-field decision stands unless ball-tracking shows a clear margin — because the prediction itself has error bars.
Why is the ball red, white or pink? Red for Tests in daylight, white for limited-overs under lights, pink for day-night Tests because it stays visible and durable.
Football
How many Laws of the Game are there? Seventeen. The offside law is number 11 and causes more argument than the other sixteen combined.
Why is it called soccer? From "association football", abbreviated in Oxford student slang. The word is English and upper-class Victorian, not American.
When was FIFA founded, and when was the first World Cup? 1904, without Britain; the first World Cup was 1930 in Uruguay, who won it.
Which country has won the most World Cups, and which has played in every one? Brazil, five, and Brazil again.
What is the Hand of God? Maradona punching the ball into the net against England in 1986. Four minutes later he scored the goal voted the best in World Cup history.
Who has scored the most World Cup goals, and who won three? Miroslav Klose with 16; Pelé is the only player with three World Cup winners' medals.
What is the Ballon d'Or? The annual award for the world's best player, awarded since 1956. Messi has the most.
What are the major club competitions? The UEFA Champions League in Europe, the Copa Libertadores in South America, and the FIFA Club World Cup.
What is a hat-trick's origin? From cricket, where a bowler taking three wickets in three balls was traditionally given a hat by his club.
What was the Miracle of Istanbul? Liverpool recovering from 3-0 down at half time to beat AC Milan on penalties in the 2005 Champions League final.
Olympics
When were the ancient Olympics held, and when did they stop? From a traditional 776 BCE, every four years, until suppressed around 393 CE — about 1,200 years.
Who revived the modern Games, and when were the first? Pierre de Coubertin; Athens, 1896, with 241 athletes from 14 nations, all men.
What is the Olympic motto, and what was added in 2021? Citius, Altius, Fortius — faster, higher, stronger — with Communiter, together, added in 2021.
What do the five rings mean? Five inhabited continents united. No ring maps to a specific continent; the six colours with the white background were chosen because every national flag then contained at least one.
Why gold, silver and bronze? A pre-existing hierarchy of scarcity and value. The 1896 winners actually received silver, and the modern sequence was standardised in 1904.
Is a gold medal solid gold? Not since 1912. It is at least 92.5 per cent silver with about six grams of gold plating.
Why is the marathon 42.195 km? Because the 1908 London course was laid from Windsor Castle so royal children could watch the start, finishing at the royal box.
Which Olympics were boycotted, and why? 1976 over New Zealand's rugby links with apartheid South Africa; 1980 over Afghanistan; 1984 in retaliation.
Which athlete has the most Olympic gold medals? Michael Phelps, 23 golds and 28 medals in swimming.
Which athlete won gold in the same individual event four times running? Several — Carl Lewis in long jump, Al Oerter in discus, Michael Phelps in the 200 m individual medley, and Kaori Icho in wrestling.
What is India's best Olympic record? Eight golds in men's field hockey, including six in a row from 1928 to 1956. Abhinav Bindra took India's first individual gold in 2008; Neeraj Chopra its first in athletics in 2021.
What are the Paralympics, and where did they start? A separate games for athletes with disabilities, from an archery competition organised by Ludwig Guttmann in 1948 for spinal-injured veterans. Para means alongside, not paralysis.
Tennis, athletics and the measured sports
What are the four Grand Slams, and their surfaces? Australian Open on hard, French Open on clay, Wimbledon on grass, US Open on hard.
Why is tennis scoring 15, 30, 40? Most likely from a clock dial moved a quarter turn per point, with 45 shortened to 40 in speech. Nobody is certain.
What does love mean in tennis? Zero, probably from French l'œuf, an egg — the same joke as a cricket duck.
Why must Wimbledon players wear white? A Victorian rule about visible sweat stains, still enforced, and relaxed only in 2023 to permit dark undershorts for female players.
Who broke the four-minute mile, and what happened next? Roger Bannister, 6 May 1954. John Landy broke it 46 days later, and sixteen more runners within three years.
What is the 100 m world record, and who holds it? 9.58 seconds, Usain Bolt, 2009, unapproached since. He also holds the 200 m at 19.19.
What is the fastest recorded human speed? About 44.7 km/h, Bolt's peak during his 9.58 run, sustained for roughly one second.
Why were full-body swimsuits banned? Because 43 world records fell at the 2009 World Championships. They were banned from 2010 and many of those records still stand.
What is a decathlon, and what does it consist of? Ten events over two days. The scoring formula is a value judgement about how events compare, which is why historical totals are not strictly comparable.
What is the fastest object in any sport? A badminton shuttlecock off a smash, above 490 km/h — and it also decelerates faster than any other projectile, because the feathered skirt is enormously draggy.
Chess and the mind sports
Where did chess come from, and what was it called? India, around the sixth century, as chaturanga — four limbs, for the four divisions of an army.
Which piece changed most, and when? The queen, in fifteenth-century Europe, from a counsellor moving one square to the strongest piece on the board. The new game was called "mad queen chess".
What is an Elo rating? A relative strength system by Arpad Elo, adopted in 1970. A 200-point gap predicts about a 76 per cent score for the stronger player.
What is the highest human rating achieved? Magnus Carlsen's 2882, in 2014.
Who was India's first grandmaster, and world champion? Viswanathan Anand, grandmaster in 1988 and world champion from 2007 to 2013.
When did a computer beat a world champion, and how? Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997 by brute-force search plus hand-written evaluation rules. AlphaGo's 2016 Go win mattered more scientifically, because it learned rather than being told.
What is God's number for a Rubik's cube? 20 — any position can be solved in at most twenty moves, proved in 2010 by a large computation.
Terms, trophies and venues
Which sport uses these terms? Birdie, eagle, bogey — golf. Love, deuce, let — tennis. Silly point, googly, yorker — cricket. Bully, penalty corner — hockey. Smash, deuce, rally — badminton. Checkmate, gambit, zugzwang — chess. Butterfly, freestyle, medley — swimming. Knockout, southpaw, jab — boxing. Scrum, try, conversion — rugby. Ippon, dojo, sensei — judo.
Which trophy goes with which sport? The Ashes urn and the Ranji Trophy — cricket; the Jules Rimet and FIFA World Cup trophy — football; the Davis Cup and Wimbledon plate — tennis; the Thomas and Uber Cups — badminton; the Ryder Cup — golf; the Stanley Cup — ice hockey; the Agha Khan Cup — field hockey; the Santosh Trophy — Indian football; the Duleep and Irani trophies — Indian cricket; the Subroto Cup — school football.
Which venues go with which sport? Lord's, the Oval and Eden Gardens — cricket; Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows — tennis; Wembley, Maracanã and Camp Nou — football; Augusta and St Andrews — golf; Le Mans and Monza — motor racing; Madison Square Garden — boxing and basketball.
How many players per side? Cricket 11, football 11, hockey 11, rugby union 15, rugby league 13, basketball 5, volleyball 6, water polo 7, kabaddi 7, baseball 9, netball 7, handball 7, polo 4.
What are the dimensions to know? A football pitch is roughly 100–110 m by 64–75 m; a tennis court is 23.77 m long and 8.23 m wide for singles; an Olympic pool is 50 m; a running track lap is 400 m; a basketball hoop is 3.05 m — ten feet — high.
Why is a basketball hoop ten feet high? Because that is the height of the balcony rail James Naismith nailed the peach baskets to in 1891. The baskets had bottoms, and somebody had to fetch the ball after every score.
Why is a golf hole 4.25 inches across? Because the first hole-cutting tool at St Andrews in 1829 was made from a piece of drainage pipe of that diameter.
Indian sport and Indian names
What is India's national sport? There is no officially declared national sport, despite the widespread belief that it is hockey. The government has confirmed this in Parliament.
Which Indian sports are traditional? Kabaddi, kho kho, mallakhamb, gilli-danda, and the martial arts kalaripayattu, silambam and gatka.
What is kabaddi's distinctive rule? The raider must chant continuously to prove they have not taken a breath.
Who is the Hockey Wizard? Dhyan Chand, who won gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936. India marks National Sports Day on his birthday, 29 August.
Which Indian awards go to sportspeople? The Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna for the highest achievement, the Arjuna Award for outstanding performance, the Dronacharya for coaches, and the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime contribution.
Who was the first Indian to win an individual Olympic medal after independence? K. D. Jadhav, wrestling bronze in 1952.
Which Indians have been world champions in their sport? Vishwanathan Anand in chess; Pankaj Advani in billiards and snooker; Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu reached the top in badminton, with Sindhu winning the world title in 2019; Mary Kom won six world boxing titles.
What is the Duckworth-Lewis method? A mathematical formula for resetting targets in rain-affected limited-overs cricket, based on the resources of overs and wickets remaining.
What is the Indian Premier League's structure? A city-franchise T20 league from 2008, with a player auction mixing Indian and overseas players — the second most valuable sports league in the world by per-match value.
Odds and ends
Which sports have no clock? Cricket, baseball, tennis, golf, volleyball and squash. A team can never run out the clock, so no lead is ever safe by definition.
Why do home teams win more often? Measured across nearly every team sport at 55 to 60 per cent. The best-supported cause is referee bias under crowd pressure — and the effect shrank measurably when stadiums were empty during the pandemic.
Which sport is played on the largest field? Polo. A full polo ground is about 275 m by 145 m, roughly nine football pitches.
What is the origin of the word "marathon", and is the story true? From the legend of Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens in 490 BCE. Herodotus describes a much longer run to Sparta and nothing about a death.
Which sports were once Olympic and are no longer? Tug of war, art competitions, live pigeon shooting, rope climbing, and the standing long jump. Coubertin himself won a gold medal for a poem in 1912 under a pseudonym.
What comes next
The next page is films and music — the awards, the firsts and the numbers, in India and elsewhere.