Some of the most popular sports in the world involve balls. No matter if you’re into EPL betting odds from Vwin Vietnam or fantasy football from one of the major North American operators, the existence of the ball is constant – even if its shape and size differ.
Aside from the most popular disciplines practised around the world – those that fill stadiums and constantly occupy most of the sports broadcasts – there are many others that involve balls. Some of them are truly crazy – and so are their balls.
Zorbing
Zorbing is a sport with a truly outstanding ball – one that contains you. Also known as orbing or globe-riding, zorbing involves rolling downhill in a transparent ball filled with air. One might argue that this is not a true sport (especially because it’s gravity that does most of the work) but this doesn’t stop its practitioners from doing it. And neither does the fact that people have perished while practising this sport, earning it the “extreme” attributive in the process.
Hamster balls have been around for quite some time – half a century if we are to believe the earliest records – but they were revitalized by three New Zealand inventors in the 1990s. Since then, it has spread across the world, with possibilities to practise it available from the UK to Thailand, and was featured in the media quite a few times.
Sepak Takraw
If you have ever seen a match of footvolley (basically a game of volleyball played exclusively using your feet and maybe your head but not your hands), you can imagine what Sepak takraw looks like. Except here, the ball is not your usual bouncy, air-filled thing… but a globe-shaped object made of rattan that doesn’t really bounce. And it’s also small – it has a maximum circumference of 17.7 inches or 45 cm. Basically, it’s a sport that has all the hard parts of volleyball combined with all the hard parts of football and sprinkles a bit of acrobatics on the top.
Sepak takraw is a traditional sport in Malaysia (it’s their national sport) and is played by teams of two to four players. It has an international federation and a world championship, too.
Bossaball
Everything is better if you add music to the mix, right? Even sports – just think of the popularity of Zumba Fitness. And when there are balls and bouncy castles involved… you’ve got yourself a winner.
Bossaball combines all of the above. It is a fusion of volleyball, association football, gymnastics, and music (bossa nova mostly), invented by a Belgian guy named Filip Eyckmans in Spain, back in 2005. Just like in volleyball, the ball has to fly over the net in the middle. Each team (of four) can touch the ball five times, either by volleyball rules (a single time, with hands and arms only) or football rules (touching the ball twice with any body part except the hands and arms). The players use the inflatable part of the field as a trampoline to gain altitude. And, just like in volleyball, the ball has to remain in the air – once it touches the ground, the team loses a point.
Bossaball is played in more than two dozen countries, and even has its own World Cup – the last one was held in Brazil in 2016.
