Afghanistan eliminate England from Champion Trophy 2025

 

England faced a group stage exit from Champions Trophy 2025 after a shocking eight-run defeat to Afghanistan on Wednesday. Having lost their opening encounter to Australia, it was a do-or-die game for England. Similar was the case for Afghanistan who not only registered a historic victory but also kept themselves alive in the race for the semi-finals. 

Group B is heating up and with England now out of the race for the semifinals, we have a three-way race between Afghanistan, Australia and South Africa for the top two spots. Next up, it is another game in Group A as hosts Pakistan take on Bangladesh in Rawalpindi in what will be a match for pride with the loser finishing without a single win.

Champions Trophy controversy

These are still early days of the Champions Trophy, but the prefix ‘neutral venue’ before Dubai for India’s matches is already inviting chuckles. In a tournament hosted by Pakistan, it is India — thanks to the conditions in Dubai, which is feeling more at home, with teams in Group B already sweating at the prospect of playing their semi-finals here on March 4. It’s somewhat akin to suddenly land up in Chennai to play on carefully-curated sluggish tracks that abet Chennai Super Kings. What’s more, here India don’t have any ‘away’ game.

This of course isn’t a complexity that has been suddenly airdropped. When the ICC adopted a hybrid model for the Champions Trophy, there were noises around the unfair advantage India were going to gain by the virtue of playing all their matches in Dubai. While other teams have had to shuttle between at least two of the three venues in Pakistan Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore, whoever was lined up to face India had to take the flight to Dubai and head back again.

More than the logistical challenge, it is the conditions that one has got to witness in Dubai that is again adding more noise with regards to how India, despite playing in a neutral venue, are after all being a home team. And these noises are not without reasons as well as unlike India, which knew what sort of conditions to expect in Dubai, packed their squad with five spinners, whereas the remaining seven teams, while factoring the flat decks in Pakistan have had to rely on pacers as well. If the Dubai pitches played similarly as Pakistan’s, then there wouldn’t be any hue and cry, but they have been markedly different.

Sports History

 

Artifacts and structures suggest sports in China as early as 2000 BC. Gymnastics appears to have been popular in China's ancient past. Monuments to the indicate that a number of sports, including swimming and fishing, were well-developed and regulated several thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt. Other Egyptian sports included javelin throwing, high jump, and wrestling. Sports such as the traditional Iranian martial art. Among other sports that originated in ancient Persia are polo and jousting. Various traditional sports of India such as Kho Kho and Kabbadi have been played for thousands of years. The kabaddi was played potentially as a preparation for hunting.

A wide range of sports were already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sport in Greece influenced one another considerably. Sport became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the Olympic games, which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the called Olympia.

Sports have been increasingly organized and regulated from the time of the ancient Olympics up to the present century. Industrialization has brought motorized

transportation and increased leisure time, letting people attend and follow spectator sports and participate in athletic activities. These trends continued with the advent of mass media and global communication. Professionalism became prevalent, further adding to the increase in sport's popularity, as sports fans followed the exploits of professional athletes – all while enjoying the exercise and competition associated with amateur participation in sports.

Sports

 

 

Sports, physical contests pursued for the goals and challenges they entail. Sports are part of every culture past and present, but each culture has its own definition of sports. The most useful definitions are those that clarify the relationship of sports to play, games, and contests. Play wrote the German theorist Carl Diem, is purposeless activity, for its own sake, the opposite of work. Humans work because they have to; they play because they want to. Play is autotelic that is, it has its own goals. It is voluntary and uncoerced.  Recalcitrant children compelled by their parents or teachers to compete in a game of soccer are not really engaged in a sport. Neither are professional athletes if their only motivation is their role. In the real world, as a practical matter, motives are frequently mixed and often quite impossible to determine. Unambiguous definition is nonetheless a prerequisite to practical determinations about what is and is not an example of play.

Sport

Sport includes all forms of competitive physical activity or games which,through casual or organized participation, at least in part aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants, and in some cases, entertainment for spectators.Sports can bring positive results to one's physical health. Hundreds of sports exist, from those between single contestants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals. In certain sports such as racing, many contestants may compete, simultaneously or consecutively, with one winner; in others, the contest (a match) is between two sides, each attempting to exceed the other. Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure one winner and one loser. A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs.

Sport is generally recognised as system of activities which are based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with the largest major competitions such as the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition,and other organisations such as the Council of Europe using definitions precluding activities without a physical element from classification as sports.However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports: bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), Go and xiangqi,and limits the number of mind games which can be admitted as sports.

Sport is usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition, and allow consistent adjudication of the winner. Winning can be determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing a line first. It can also be determined by judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, including objective or subjective measures such as technical performance or artistic impression.

Records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or reported in sport news. Sport is also a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sport drawing large crowds to sport venues, and reaching wider audiences through broadcasting. Sport betting is in some cases severely regulated, and in some cases is central to the sport.

According to A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, the global sporting industry is worth up to $620 billion as of 2013.The world's most accessible and practised sport is running, while association football is the most popular spectator sport.