Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In South India, football (soccer) has a reasonably strong following, especially in Kerala and Goa. In 2013
India occupied the 166th spot in the FIFA world rankings.
Despite being India's national sport, field hockey no longer enjoys the same fervent fol-
lowing it once did, largely due to the unassailable popularity of cricket, which snatches
most of India's sponsorship funding. During its golden era, between 1928 and 1956, India
won six consecutive Olympic gold medals in hockey; it later bagged two further Olympic
gold medals, one in 1964 and the other in 1980. Recent initiatives to ignite renewed in-
terest in the game have had mixed results. At the time of writing, India's national men's/
women's hockey world rankings were 11/12 respectively. Tap into India's hockey scene at
Indian Hockey (
www.indianhockey.com
)
and Indian Field Hockey
Other sports which are growing in popularity in India include tennis (the country's star
performers are Sania Mirza, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi) - to delve deeper, click
www.aitatennis.com
;
football (soccer), which is particularly strong in the country's east
and south; and horse racing, which is reasonably popular in the larger cities such as Mum-
bai and Bengaluru.
If you're interested in catching a sporting event during your time in India, consult local
newspapers (or ask at a tourist office) for current details about dates and venues.
India has one of the world's largest diasporas - over 25 million people - with Indian banks holding up-
wards of US$50 billion in Non-Resident Indian (NRI) accounts.
