MUMBAI: It might seem like the world can't get enough of the cricket celebrities or the football studs but there are certain pockets of the world where these big games take a back seat. Starting 7 July, every Monday at 10 pm National Geographic Channel will be talking a peek at these 'different' games in A different ball game.
Starting of the first series of the season with a tour of Asia, anchor-presenter Emma Levine will trek from Turkey to Southern India in search of the world's most incredible and bizarre traditional sports. During her stay in Bombay, a British sports journalist and adventurer, Levine wrote and photographed a broad range of ancient traditional sports. Later she presented entire study as a book A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat. The six-part series, A Different Ball Game, is based on that book.
According to the company site, Levine will be investigating some fascinating and unusual sports like the camel racing in Iran, polo with a headless goat in Kyrgyzstan, archery in northeastern India, donkey racing in Pakistan, bull racing in South India and oil wrestling in Turkey.
She will be bringing her lifelong love of sport and international travel to her role as personal guide to some of the most fascinating traditional sports on the planet in some of the world's more remote regions. Whether or not the audience is keen on watching sports, bits about leather-clad wrestlers dripping in olive oil, polo players scrapping over a headless goat and camel racers armed with guns should be an interesting watch.
After the six-part series on queer sports in Asia, Peruvian and British anthropologist, Dr Luisa Elvira will be presenting the second series on unusual sports in Latin America.