Report by Ch.Ab.Qayoom State head Tribbal news network kashmir
Popular sports in Jammu and Kashmir include cricket, football and winter sports along with sports like golf, water sports and adventure sports. The National Winter Games have been held in Gulmarg in 1996, 2004 and 2008. The first Khelo India Winter Games were held in February and March 2020 in Leh and Gulmarg. Jammu and Kashmir won the most gold medals (26 gold, 29 silver, 21 bronze) while the Indian Army team came second with 8 gold medals. The second edition of the winter games were also held successfully in Gulmarg in 2020 with Jammu and Kashmir coming first and Karnataka second. Snowmobile riders enjoying themselves at the 5th National Winter Games at Gulmarg, Kashmir in 2008.
Jammu and Kashmir has produced numerous international and national level players including Gul Dev, the first Kashmiri Olympian, numerous Indian Premier League cricketers such as Abdul Samad and Mithun Manhuas, sharp shooter Chain Singh and footballer Mehrajuddin Wadoo among others.
Princely state of Jammu and Kashmir
In 1883, in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, hunting was still a sport though restrictions on what could be killed and where game could be hunted had started to take force. In A. E. Ward’s Sportsman’s Guide to Kashmir and Ladakh, Ward writes, “in Kashmir there exist two or three hundred men who call themselves shikaris, but there are not two dozen who are worthy of the name. In no other part of India have I come across such an errant collection of impostors.” Game included markhor, ibex, there, serow, goral, burel, deer, antelope, yak, wolf, Sāmbhar and others. By the time Ward came out with the fourth edition of his book in 1896 he notes that there is “but little sport to be got in the whole of the Kashmir dominions”. By 1942 the Jammu and Kashmir Game Preservation Action came into force which outlined the conditions under which game could be killed.
