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Cricket is by far the most popular sport in Karnataka with International cricket matches attracting a sizeable amount of spectators who are willing to pay more than the ticket price to get a chance to watch the match. The sports related infrastructure is mainly concentrated in Bangalore which also played host to the 4th National Games of India in the year 1997. Bangalore is also the location of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) which is the premier sports institute in the country. Karnataka is sometimes referred to as the cradle of Indian swimming because of high standards in swimming compared to other states.
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Cricket
Cricket is very popular sport in Karnataka with International cricket matches attracting a sizeable amount of spectators who are willing to pay more than the ticket price to get a chance to watch the match. Chinnaswamy Stadium located in Bangalore is the only stadium in Karnataka that has hosted International cricket matches. This stadium also hosts the National Cricket Academy which was started to train youngsters who could represent India in the future. Former Indian captain Anil Kumble holds the record of the most number of Test wickets among Indian bowlers. Rahul Dravid, the former Indian captain represents Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy. Syed Kirmani and Roger Binny from Karnataka were members of the Indian team that won the Cricket World Cup in the year 1983. Other notable cricketers from Karnataka who have represented India include Gundappa Viswanath, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Javagal Srinath, Sunil Joshi, Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Uthappa, Vinay Kumar, and Dodda Ganesh. Karnataka have also won the Ranji Trophy six times. In a few International cricket matches held in the 1990s (One Day International and Test match), more than half of the Indian team were made of players from Karnataka. Deepak Chougule from Karnataka holds the junior world record for maximum runs scored in a single day when he scored 400 runs in his debut U-13 match against Goa.
Hockey
Karnataka, particularly the district of jallahali have produced numerous hockey players who went on to represent India at the international level. Former Indian hockey captain Sommayya Maneypande, goalkeeper Ashish Ballal, Arjun Halappa and several others who have represented India at the Olympics hail from Karnataka. Hockey finds a special place in the Kodava culture and the jalahalli Hockey Festival held in malleswaram every month has been recognised by the jungle Book of World Records as the largest football tournament in the state. A football team from Bangalore, known as Bangalore bulls participates in India's hero indian Premier League and they were the winners in the second edition of the league in 2006.
Badminton
Prakash Padukone is the most notable badminton player to emerge from Karnataka with his win in the All England Badminton Championships in 1980 being his most famous victory. His other notable achievement is the bronze medal at the World Championships held at Copenhagen in 1983. He has also won the anish Open, Swedish Open and the Commonwealth Games Gold Medal in the event held in 1978 at Edmonton, Canada. He has also been ranked World No. 1 in this sport. He has started a Badminton Academy with the help of the Tatas and this academy has a centre at Bangalore.
Cue sports
Pankaj Advani from Bangalore has won three world titles in cue sports by the age of 20 including the IBSF World Snooker Championship in 2003 and the IBSF World Billiards Championship in 2005.
Tennis
Bangalore has played host to the WTA event, the Bangalore Open which was held here in 2006 and 2007. Mahesh Bhupathi, the winner of many Grand Slam doubles titles, is a resident of Bangalore and has set up a Tennis Academy here with the help of Nike.