The King of Games - Let other people play at other things.

The King of Games is still the Game of Kings.

This verse, inscribed on a stone tablet beside a polo ground South of the fables silk route from China to the West, sums up the ancient history of what is believed to be the oldest organized sport in the world. Polo was truly a game of Kings, for most of its reputed 2,500 years or more of existence. Although the precise origin of polo is obscure and undocumented, there is ample evidence of the game's regal place in the history of Asia. No one knows where or when stick first met ball after the horse was domesticated by the tribes of Central Asia, but it seems likely that as the use of light cavalry spread throughout Asia Minor, China and the Indian sub-continent so did this rugged game on horse back. As mounted Armies swept back and forth across this part of the world, conquering and re-conquering, polo was adopted as the most noble of pastimes by the Kings and Emperors, Shahs and Sultans, Khans and Caliphs of the ancient Persians, Arabs, Mughals, Mongols and Chinese. The great rulers and their horsemen real and legendary, of those early centuries were expected to be brave warriors, skillful hunters and polo players of exceptional prowess.

Polo's roots

are in

ancient warfare

Although many associate polo with the British Empire, the game's origins are far older. Four thousand years ago the tribes of central Asia domesticated wild horses, migrated to Persia and mastered the art of warfare on horseback. To practice their maneuvers, they began playing polo. The first references to the game in Persian literature date to 600 BC. But the best-known are contained in the 11th-century Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, who used polo as a metaphor for God's dominion over the apparent chaos of life:

  • In the cosmic game of polo you are the ball
  • The mallet's left and right becomes your call
  • He who causes your movements, your rise and fall

Thanks to the military superiority of its cavalry, Persia expanded its empire across Asia in the 5th century BC, and the horse -- and polo -- arrived in China, Japan and Tibet. ("Polo" is derived from pulu, the Tibetan word for ball.) Although it has all but vanished from those lands, it is still played by the hill tribes of northern Pakistan; the biggest match of the year in that country is played under a full moon on a rocky field astride the 11,000-foot Shandur Pass, following rules dictated 800 years ago by a descendant of Genghis Khan.

The Moguls who took the game from Persia to the east, leading to the spread of the sport.  The strategic game resembles military tactics, and while the game has adapted throughout time, the core concepts remain.

 

With British colonisation of India, British tea planters discovered the game being played by Manipuri settlers, on the Burmese border with India. The world’s first polo club was formed at Silchar in 1859, west of Manipur. The oldest club in the world which is still in existence is the Calcutta Club, established in 1862.

The Sydney Polo Club lays claim to being the first polo club in the southern hemisphere, having been formed only a year later in 1870. The first real rules of the game were formulated in India in the 1870s.

The game then travelled from England to New York City in 1876. The match was played with a bunch of mallets and balls and a railroad car of Texas cow ponies. The United States Polo Association was founded in 1890. Australia was not yet a federated nation and in 1892 the New South Wales Polo Association was formed.

 

Polo is played in over 77 countries with efforts being made by the International Polo Federation (FIP) to return it to the Olympics. It was played in the Olympics in 1900, 1908, 1920, 1924 and 1936. It is still a recognised sport under the International Olympic Committee.

 

It is most popular in Argentina, England and the United States which currently comprise over half of the world’s players.

 

The game takes its name from the Tibetan word for the willow root ‘pulu’, which the ball was commonly made. The polo ball is now made of plastic. However, the mallets, true to tradition, are still made from bamboo.

 

  • He is the one, the only one, who knows it all.

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