Other Sports

Beyond cricket, football, hockey, tennis and badminton, a cluster of "other sports" recurs across Indian competitive exams — usually tested through a handful of durable, high-yield facts rather than exhaustive tournament detail. This section compresses each into exactly the facts worth knowing.

Kabaddi

Kabaddi is distinctive among the sports in this book for being a genuinely indigenous South Asian sport that has been given a modern, IPL-style commercial makeover through the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), launched in 2014 and now one of India's most-watched domestic leagues after cricket. PKL follows a franchise-city model (much like the IPL), and its most successful franchise historically has been Patna Pirates (with multiple titles concentrated in the league's earlier seasons), though more recent seasons have seen new champions emerge, including Haryana Steelers, who won their maiden title in the league's 11th season (2024), beating Patna Pirates in the final. Kabaddi is also a medal sport at the Asian Games, where India has traditionally been the dominant force in both men's and women's competitions, though recent editions have seen Iran and South Korea mount serious challenges, ending India's earlier stretch of unbroken dominance.

Practice Recall: In what year was the Pro Kabaddi League launched, and which two franchises met in the Season 11 (2024) final?

Answer: 2014; Haryana Steelers (winners) vs. Patna Pirates.

Chess

Chess's exam relevance in India has spiked sharply in recent years thanks to a wave of young Indian grandmasters, making this one of the fastest-moving "other sports" categories in the book. The World Chess Championship, organised under FIDE (the International Chess Federation), is contested in a multi-game match format between the reigning champion (or top challenger) and a challenger determined through the Candidates Tournament.

The single most important recent fact: D. Gukesh (Dommaraju Gukesh) defeated the reigning champion Ding Liren of China in the 2024 World Chess Championship match, becoming, at 18 years old, the youngest-ever undisputed World Chess Champion — surpassing the previous record held by Garry Kasparov (who was 22 when he won his first title). This is a landmark fact worth knowing cold: it is both a chess fact and an "India's youngest achievers" fact, the kind of overlap examiners deliberately exploit.

Other Indian chess landmarks worth knowing: Viswanathan Anand remains India's most decorated chess player historically, a five-time World Champion (across different championship formats/periods) and the first Indian to become a Grandmaster (1988); he is often credited with sparking India's broader chess boom, of which Gukesh, along with contemporaries such as R. Praggnanandhaa (who reached the Chess World Cup final in 2023, becoming the second-youngest finalist ever), represents the next generation. India's growing depth in the sport is also reflected in team results — the Indian men's and women's teams both won gold at the 44th Chess Olympiad, held in Chennai in 2022, the first time the event was hosted in India.

Memory hook — "Anand lit the fire, Gukesh is the youngest flame": Viswanathan Anand (India's first Grandmaster, five-time World Champion) built India's chess culture from near-zero; three decades later, Gukesh, a product of that very culture, became the youngest-ever undisputed World Champion at 18 — one origin story, one record-breaking payoff.

Practice Recall: Who did Gukesh defeat to become World Chess Champion in 2024, and whose previous "youngest champion" record did he break?

Answer: Ding Liren of China; he broke Garry Kasparov's record (Kasparov was 22 when he first became champion; Gukesh was 18).

Wrestling

Wrestling is one of India's most consistent sources of individual Olympic and Commonwealth medals, run internationally by United World Wrestling (UWW), with the sport split into freestyle and Greco-Roman styles (Greco-Roman prohibits holds below the waist, while freestyle permits leg attacks — a distinction worth knowing since Indian wrestlers compete almost exclusively in freestyle). India's most decorated Olympic wrestlers include Sushil Kumar (bronze at Beijing 2008, silver at London 2012 — the first Indian to win two individual Olympic medals) and Sakshi Malik (bronze at Rio 2016, India's first Olympic medal by a female wrestler). Indian wrestling has also been at the centre of significant sports-administration current affairs in recent years, including protests by top wrestlers over federation governance — a reminder that this sport frequently crosses over from "trophy trivia" into live current-affairs territory.

Boxing

Boxing at the Olympic and Commonwealth level is organised by weight category, and India's standout name is Mary Kom, a six-time World Amateur Boxing Champion and an Olympic bronze medallist (London 2012) — one of the most decorated female boxers in world history and a rare Indian athlete to combine sustained international dominance with Olympic success. Vijender Singh won India's first-ever Olympic boxing medal (bronze, Beijing 2008) before turning professional. The World Boxing Championships (separately for men and women) and the Olympics remain the sport's two most exam-relevant events, alongside the Commonwealth and Asian Games, where Indian boxers have historically performed strongly.

Athletics

Athletics is the sport most directly tied to the Olympics, Asian Games, and Commonwealth Games medal-table questions covered later in this book, and its single most important recent Indian fact is Neeraj Chopra's gold medal in the men's javelin throw at the Tokyo Olympics (2020/2021) — India's first-ever Olympic gold in athletics, and only the second individual Olympic gold in India's history after Abhinav Bindra's shooting gold at Beijing 2008. Chopra followed this with a silver at the Paris Olympics (2024), and has also won gold at the World Athletics Championships (2023, Budapest) — becoming the first Indian to win a World Championships gold in athletics. Other Indian athletics landmarks worth knowing: P.T. Usha, "the Queen of Indian Track and Field," narrowly missed an Olympic bronze by one-hundredth of a second at Los Angeles 1984 (still one of Indian sport's most cited "so close" stories), and Milkha Singh, "the Flying Sikh," similarly finished fourth at the Rome 1960 Olympics.

Memory hook — "Bindra shot first, Chopra threw second": Abhinav Bindra's shooting gold (Beijing 2008) was India's first-ever individual Olympic gold; Neeraj Chopra's javelin gold (Tokyo 2020/21) was India's second individual Olympic gold and its first in athletics specifically — two different sports, two "firsts" that are easy to conflate if you don't hold the sport-specific qualifier ("first individual gold" vs. "first athletics gold") firmly in mind.

Golf

Golf's major championships are the sport's equivalent of tennis's Grand Slams — a small, fixed, high-prestige set of four events, though unlike tennis, golf's four majors are not evenly spread by surface (there is no "surface" concept in golf) but by course and organising body.

India's most notable golf current-affairs figures include Aditi Ashok, who finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics (2020/21) — the closest an Indian golfer has come to an Olympic medal since golf's return to the Olympic programme in 2016 (after a 112-year absence).