A ball is a round object with several uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used for simpler activities, such as catch or juggling. Balls made from hard-wearing materials are used in engineering applications to provide very low friction bearings, known as ball bearings. Black-powder weapons use stone and metal balls as projectiles.
Futsal is a football-based game played on a hardcourt like a basketball court, smaller than a football pitch, and mainly indoors. It has similarities to five-a-side football and indoor football.
Shinny is an informal type of hockey played on ice. It is also used as another term for street hockey. There are no formal rules or specific positions, and often, there are no goaltenders. The goal areas at each end may be marked by nets, or simply by objects, such as stones or blocks of snow. Body checking and lifting or "roofing/reefing/raising the puck" are often forbidden because the players are not wearing protective equipment. Shinny is a game that all levels of hockey enthusiasts can play because it requires no rink, requires no skills except ability to hold a stick and at the very least to try to touch the puck or ball when it goes by. Shinny may be completely non-competitive and recreational.
Broomball is a both a recreational and organized competitive winter team sport played on ice or snow and is played either indoors or outdoors, depending on climate and location. It is a ball sport and is most popularly played in Canada and the United States.
Kickball is a team sport and league game, similar to baseball. Like baseball, it is a safe haven game in which one team tries to score by having its players return a ball from home base to the field and then circle the bases. Meanwhile, the other team tries to stop them by tagging them "out" with the ball before they can return to the home base. However, instead of hitting a small, hard ball with a bat, players kick an inflated rubber ball; this makes it more accessible to young children. As in baseball, teams alternate half-innings. The team with the most runs after a predefined number of innings wins.
Crab soccer, or crab football, is an informal sport that originated in Britain in 1863, derived from soccer played by two teams, commonly in physical education classes. As with regular soccer, the objective is to kick an inflated ball into a goal to score the most points. Unlike soccer, players support themselves on their hands and move with their feet, in motions that make them look like crabs, a method known as crab walking. Crab soccer may be played outdoors or in a gymnasium, and is more commonly thought of as being a sport played by children. The game can be played with a regular soccer ball, but is often played with a cage ball.
La soule, later choule, is a traditional team sport that originated in Normandy and Picardy. The ball, called a soule, could be solid or hollow and made of either wood or leather. Leather balls would be filled with hay, bran, horse hair or moss. Sometimes the balls had woolen pompons.
In several team sports, matches are played in two halves. Half-time is the name given to the interval between the two halves of the match. Typically, after half-time, teams swap ends of the field of play in order to reduce any advantage that may be gained from wind or a slope to the playing surface, for example.
Lacrosse has its origins in a tribal game played by eastern Woodlands Native Americans and by some Plains Indians tribes in what is now the United States of America and Canada. The game was extensively modified by European settlers to create its current collegiate and professional form. There were hundreds of native men playing a ball game with sticks. The game began with the ball being tossed into the air and the two sides rushing to catch it. Because of the large number of players involved, these games generally tended to involve a huge mob of players swarming the ball and slowly moving across the field. Passing the ball was thought of as a trick, and it was seen as cowardly to dodge an opponent. Years later lacrosse is still a popular sport played all over the world. The indigenous people would wear their normal clothes and use a wooden stick and they would play the game with 100-1000 players on each team and they played on 1-2 kilometer fields.
The English word football may mean any one of several team sports, depending on the national or regional origin and location of the person using the word; the unqualified use of the word football usually refers to the most popular code of football in that region. The sports most frequently referred to as simply football are association football, American football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, rugby league football and rugby union football.
The history of association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, stretches back at least to the medieval times. Some predecessors of football may date back to ancient Greece and Rome, and similar games were played in ancient China and Japan. The history of football in Britain dates at least to the eighth century CE.
Table football, or table soccer, is a tabletop game that is loosely based on association football. The aim of the game is to move the ball into the opponent's goal by manipulating rods which have figures attached. Although rules often vary by country and region when the game is played casually, at the competitive level table soccer is played according to a unified code.
Pond hockey is a form of ice hockey similar in its object and appearance to traditional ice hockey, but simplified and designed to be played on part of a natural frozen body of water. The rink is 50 to 80 percent the size of a standard NHL-specification rink, and has no boards or glass surrounding it; usually only a barrier of snow keeps the puck in play. In addition, because there are no protective barriers behind the goal to contain high errant shots, the top of the goal is lower, in fact only slightly taller than the width of a puck, and the game does not have a formal goalie. Because of these differences, pond hockey places more emphasis on skating and puckhandling ability and less on shooting and checking. Non-competitive pond hockey is played with improvised goals, rinks of a variety of sizes, and no boards or snow barriers. There can only be 4 players playing per team at a time but have many subs to sub in.
Bat-and-ball games are field games played by two opposing teams. Action starts when the defending team throws a ball at a dedicated player of the attacking team, who tries to hit it with a bat and run between various safe areas in the field to score runs (points). The defending team can use the ball in various ways against the attacking team's players to force them off the field when they are not in safe zones, and thus prevent them from further scoring. The best known modern bat-and-ball games are cricket and baseball, with common roots in the 18th-century games played in England.
Australian rules football and Gaelic football are codes of football, from Australia and Ireland respectively, which have similar styles and features of play. Notably both are dominated by kicking from the hand and hand passing as well as rules requiring the ball is bounced by a player running in possession, both have a differentiated scoring system, with higher and lower points values for different scoring shots, both have no offside rule, and both allow more physical contact and players on the field than other football codes - 15 in gaelic football, 18 in Australian Rules.
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word football normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly called football include association football ; gridiron football ; Australian rules football; rugby union and rugby league; and Gaelic football. These various forms of football share, to varying degrees, common origins and are known as "football codes".
The 1869 Princeton vs. Rutgers football game was played between Princeton and Rutgers on November 6, 1869. The rules governing play were based on the London Football Association's 1863 rules that disallowed carrying or throwing the ball. Therefore, the game more closely resembled soccer than gridiron football. Moreover, the match was played with a soccer ball. As a result, it is considered the first collegiate soccer match and the birth of soccer in the United States.
Indigenous North American stickball is a team sport typically played on an open field where teams of players with two sticks each attempt to control and shoot a ball at the opposing team's goal. It shares similarities to the game of lacrosse. In Choctaw Stickball, "Opposing teams use handcrafted sticks or kabocca, and a woven leather ball, or towa. Each team tries to advance the ball down the field to the other team's goalpost using only their sticks, never touching or throwing the ball with their hands. Points are scored when a player hits the opposing team's goalpost with the ball."
The sport of lacrosse has been played in the United States by Native Americans long before European exploration. The sport is most popular in the northeast and mid-Atlantic areas of the country. However, the game has recently developed into a popular team sport for both men and women in all regions of the United States.
India has several traditional games and sports, some of which have been played for thousands of years. Many of these games do not require much equipment or playing space. Some traditional Indian games are only played in certain regions of India, or may be known by different names and played under different rules and regulations in different regions of the country. Many Indian games are also similar to other traditional South Asian games.
