Polo And Aristocracy

Added: 11/29/2007

What is Polo? In short, Polo is a team sport played outdoor and on horseback, where the prime objective is to score goals against the opponent team. It is seen that the riders do score by means of driving a white wooden or plastic ball, into the goal of the adversary through a long-handled mallet. But the goals happen to be only valid if the scoring rider is mounted. In general, in the present world there are very traditional sports that are played outdoors, polo and rugby, happen to be the two of it.

How the game of polo is played? Through ages the rules and regulations have changed, but now since there is an international committee, they happen to be quite stable. Such being the case the fate of polo and other sports appear to expand through disciplinary manners. In this regard, it has been found, that each polo team is consisted of four riders and their mounts, with the play ooccuring in seven-minute periods, called chukkas. Six chukkas is the normal length of play; however, depending on league rules, matches can also have four or eight chukkas. It is to be noted that in the discipline of field polo, for the betterment of both polo and the discipline of the game, there is the strong requirement of two teams, each consisted of 4 players mounting on the horseback to play the game. What should be the ideal length of the playground? The field is 300 yards long, and either 200 yards or 160 yards wide if there are side boards—these are generally 6" high. There are lightweight goalposts on each side of the field spreaded 8 yards apart. The object of the game is to score the most goals by hitting the ball through the goal. However, with the passage of years there have been the introduction of several dimensions of the game of polo and the modern indoor variant is known as arena polo. It should be taken into consideration that the arena polo is played mainly in the United States in large arenas such as armories and riding academies.

In arena polo, there are 3 instead of traditional four players on each team and chukkas are 7 1/2 minutes in length. The playing area is 300' x 150' for polo and goals are scored by passing the ball into a 10' goal receded back from the sideboards. On the other hand, the Arena polo in general, uses a ball between 12.5" and 15" inches in circumference and looks like a miniature soccer ball. But this is not the only form in the modern age. There is also another modern variant, which is known as snow polo and is played either outdoor or indoor on snow, on a frozen ground or ice. In this modern class of the traditional form of polo, each of the participaing teams is consisted of of three players and also the equipments do differ from the sport of polo. However, with the passing of days there have also been the introduction of other forms, among which elephant polo, bike polo and last but not the least, segway polo are most prominent. However, these sports are considered as separate sports because of the prevalence of differences in the composition of teams, equipment, rules, game facilities etc.

But when did polo origin? According to history, the sport of Polo was first played in Persia (modern Iran), from the period of the 6th century BC to the 1st century AD. Though at the beginning it used to be a training game for the cavalry units, usually the king's guard or other elite troops, but to the warlike tribesmen who used to play with at least 100 men to their side, was nothing less than a miniature battle. But in the modern days, though the game was both formalized and popularized by the mighty British, in general, it is derived from the princes of the Tibeto-Burman kingdom of Manipur, in India. The first polo club was established in the town of Silchar in Assam, India, in 1834, as the part of royal gesture. There is indeed a deep relation between polo and aristocracy.

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