Sports

From an academic perspective there is a distinct difference between play, games, sports, and athletics. The following definitions are based on classroom lectures (Competitive Sports and Sports in Society) given by Dr. Arnold Flath at Oregon State U.niversity during the mid-1970s. 

Top 10 Best Soccer/Football Players in the World 

Contents

1. Lionel Messi

2. Cristiano Ronaldo

3. Neymar

4. Robert Lewandowski

5. Kylian Mbappé

6. Kevin De Bruyne

7. Virgil van Dijk

8. Sadio Mané

9. Riyad Mahrez

10. Erling Haaland 

Play is unstructured activity. Youngsters are creative when they engage in play. Tell a five-year old boy to go play and he will run, jump, skip, and do somersaults. He may take time out to look at a bug or smell a flower. Give a young girl a ball and she will kick it, throw it, roll it, and bounce it. Kids instinctively know how to play – they don’t need coaches, clinics, officials, scoreboards, or cheerleaders. Play is physical activity in its purest form.

Games are activity with a minimal set of rules, equipment, and coaching. Games may be competitive or cooperative and a scoreboard is optional. Young basketball players may play a game of horse or they may work together to make twenty free throws as a team. When games are played it is possible to have multiple winners.

Sports are a structured form of physical activity. There are teams, coaches, officials, and a scoreboard. Sports are played by amateurs for the “love of the game”. There was a time when college athletics and the Olympics could be classified as sports.

Athletics is competition that exists for the purpose of determining a winner. It involves a minimal set of rules, much like games. The difference is that athletic activity involves competition just short of open warfare. Athletics may involve people and machines. It exists for entertainment purposes and financial gain. 

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. The batting side scores runs by striking the ball bowled at the wicket with the bat (and running between the wickets), while the bowling and fielding side tries to prevent this (by preventing the ball from leaving the field, and getting the ball to either wicket) and dismiss each batter (so they are "out"). 

Women's cricket was first recorded in Surrey in 1745. International development began at the start of the 20th century and the first Test Match was played between Australia and England in December 1934. The following year, New Zealand women joined them, and in 2007 Netherlands women became the tenth women's Test nation when they made their debut against South Africa women. 

Top 30 best batsman Cricket players of all time :- 

1. Sir Don Bradman (Australia)

2. Sachin Tendulkar (India)

3. Sir Garfield Sobers (West Indies)

4. Imran Khan (Pakistan)

5. Sir Ian Botham (England)

6. Shane Warne (Australia)

7. Sir Viv Richards (West Indies)

8. Brian Lara (West Indies)

9. Jaques Kallis (South Africa)

10. MS Dhoni (India)

11. Wasim Akram (Pakistan)

12. Virat Kohli (India)

13. James Anderson (England)

14. Sir Alastair Cook (England)

15. Muttiah Muralitharan (Sri Lanka)

16. Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka)

17. Kapil Dev (India)

18. Sir Richard Hadlee (New Zealand)

19. Adam Gilchrist (Australia)

20. Chris Gayle (West Indies)

21. Glenn McGrath (Australia)

22. Ricky Ponting (Australia)

23. Steve Waugh (Australia)

24. Rahul Dravid (India)

25. Sunil Gavaskar (India)

26. Shoaib Akhtar (Pakistan)

27. Sir Curtly Ambrose (West Indies)

28. Mahela Jayawardene (Sri Lanka)

29. Dale Steyn (South Africa)

30. Allan Donald (South Africa)

In 1958, the International Women's Cricket Council was founded (it merged with the ICC in 2005). In 1973, the first Cricket World Cup of any kind took place when a Women's World Cup was held in England. In 2005, the International Women's Cricket Council was merged with the International Cricket Council (ICC) to form one unified body to help manage and develop cricket. The ICC Women's Rankings were launched on 1 October 2015 covering all three formats of women's cricket. 

Association football, more commonly known as simply 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. The game is played on a rectangular field called a pitch with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to outscore the opposition by moving the ball beyond the goal line into the opposing goal. The team with the higher number of goals wins the game.