Tahmeed Rahman Taseen
Sports speaks
all languages, it divides all barriers and unites races, nations, casts,
religions and everything and everyone. It is the universal language for love
and unity.
Football, or soccer as they call it here, is undoubtedly the biggest sports in
the world with more than 5 billion active following, followed by Cricket at 3
billion in the second place.
Though these two seem to be the two biggest sports in the world, the sports following in The North seems to vary a lot. More than 3/4th of the people from here don’t even know about Cricket’s existence. And football seems to get a different definition of sport like rugby played only by the Americans known as, “American Football”. Football becomes ‘Soccer’ when it enters the atmosphere of North America.
The most popular sports here follow
the list of American Football, Basketball, Ice Hockey etc as the top sports.
Though Canada is a big, big country, but it doesn’t seem to have a good
infrastructure for Domestic Sports Competitions as most of the sporting teams from
here participates in the American Leagues.
Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto FC are some of
the biggest sporting names from Canada participating in The NBA, MLB, NHL and
MLS respectively. Montreal Canadiens, Winnipeg Jets, Vancouver Canuck etc are
some major teams from Canada as well. Hockey is undoubtedly the biggest sports
played here in Canada all-round the year but Blue Jays and Raptors lead the
internet search results.
Though
football is very popular in Bangladesh and used to be the most popular sports
till the early 90s, Cricket has taken over the sports scene in Bangladesh and
is ahead by leaps and bounds now. Cricket started becoming popular in
Bangladesh after Bangladesh became a top associate member of The ICC and
started participating regularly in The ICC Tournaments. The biggest success
came after Bangladesh won The ICC Trophy in 1997 and secured a place in The ICC
Cricket World Cup in 1999 where The Tigers caused much upset by defeating
Pakistan and Scotland. Since then, Bangladesh had to never look back, achieving
Test Status and now, going into The ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 as the
tournament’s Dark Horse and in many experts’ eyes, The Dark Favorites.
Though Cricket dethroned Football from the popularity peak in Bangladesh,
Football still remains the second most popular sport in the country and
probably the most regularly followed sport in the country. People in Bangladesh
spend countless of sleepless nights watching The UEFA Champions League and the
top European Football Leagues like the Premier League, La Liga etc.
Despite of Kabaddi being the National Sports of the country, sports and
athletics like Hockey, Kabaddi, Badminton seems to have lost it’s aura long ago
among the fierce competition of Cricket and Football.
