The two countries played in New York in 1844 — decades before the first Test match between England and Australia in 1877.
Wacky Facts
Every fact below is short, true and sourced: tap the source link under any of them to check it yourself. Share the ones that surprise you, or browse all topics.
Chess boxing is a real sport.
Competitors alternate rounds of chess and boxing; you win by checkmate, knockout or judges’ decision.
ODI innings use two new balls.
Since 2011, ODI innings use two new white balls, one from each end.
Badminton’s shuttlecock is the fastest object in racket sports.
Smashes have been recorded at over 400 km/h in controlled tests, although the feathers slow it quickly.
2021Neeraj Chopra won India’s first Olympic gold in athletics.
He won the javelin at the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021.
The Olympic rings stand for five continents.
Designed in 1913, at least one of the ring colours appears on every nation’s flag.
The first modern Olympics had only 14 nations.
The 1896 Athens Games featured about 241 athletes from 14 nations; today over 200 teams compete.
Test cricket uses red balls; day-night Tests use pink.
Red balls are used in Tests; white balls in limited-overs games since the 1970s; pink balls for day-night Tests since 2015.
Kabaddi is played in over 30 countries.
Kabaddi, which originated in ancient India, is now played internationally, with a World Cup and the popular Pro Kabaddi League.
A cricket pitch is exactly 22 yards long.
That is about 20.12 m, a length that has not changed since the 18th century.
1891Basketball was invented with peach baskets.
James Naismith created it in 1891, nailing peach baskets to a gym balcony.
Badminton’s rules were first written in Pune.
British officers in India played a game called “Poona”, and early rules were drawn up there in the 1870s before the sport was named after Badminton House in England.
Kabaddi has been played in India for thousands of years.
Kabaddi is believed to have originated in ancient Tamil Nadu and became a medal sport at the Asian Games in 1990.
2012Sachin Tendulkar scored 100 international centuries.
He reached his 100th international hundred in March 2012 against Bangladesh — 51 in Tests and 49 in ODIs.
The Tour de France riders cover about 3,500 km in three weeks.
The race, first held in 1903, has around 21 stages including high mountain climbs.
1988Viswanathan Anand was India’s first chess grandmaster.
He became a grandmaster in 1988 and later won the world championship five times.
Golf balls have dimples to fly further.
Dimples create a thin turbulent layer of air that reduces drag, letting the ball travel much further than a smooth one.
Olympic gold medals are mostly silver.
Rules require gold medals to be at least 92.5% silver, plated with about 6 grams of gold.
Hockey was India’s greatest Olympic sport.
India won eight Olympic gold medals in men’s field hockey, including six in a row from 1928 to 1956.
Table tennis started as a parlour game with books as nets.
Victorians used books as nets and cigar-box lids as bats.
1971Golf was played on the Moon.
Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on the Moon in February 1971.
1908The marathon distance was set by a royal family.
The 42.195 km distance comes from the 1908 London Olympics route from Windsor Castle to the royal box.
2012Mary Kom is a six-time world boxing champion.
She also won an Olympic bronze medal in 2012.
A cricket ball can travel over 150 km/h.
The fastest recorded deliveries are around 161 km/h, taking well under half a second to reach the batter.