Madhya Pradesh Quiz: Sports and State Awards of Madhya Pradesh

The old gymnastic art in which the performer does poses on a fixed wooden pole, a hanging pole or a rope was declared the state sport of Madhya Pradesh in 2013, and the state trains players in it through schools and academies.

It is the highest sports honour of Madhya Pradesh and is given to outstanding senior sportspersons of the state, usually for performance at the national and international level in the preceding year.

The Eklavya Award is the junior sports honour of Madhya Pradesh and is given each year to young sportspersons under nineteen who have done well at the national level, the name recalling the young archer of the Mahabharata who taught himself.

The Vishwamitra Award honours coaches of Madhya Pradesh whose trainees have won medals at the national or international level, and the name is taken from Vishwamitra, the teacher of Rama, which fits an award for teaching rather than for playing.

The Kalidas Samman, instituted in 1980, moves between these four fields from year to year, the plastic arts covering painting and sculpture, and it belongs with the Kalidas Samaroh held at Ujjain, the city connected with the poet Kalidas.

The Tansen Samman is presented at the Tansen Samaroh held every year at Gwalior, near the tomb of Tansen, the singer of Akbar’s court who came from that region, and it honours work in Hindustani classical music.

The Kishore Kumar Samman honours work in cinema, in acting, direction, music or allied crafts, and it is named after the singer and actor Kishore Kumar, who was born at Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh, so the state attaches his name to its film honour.

Sachin Tendulkar scored two hundred not out against South Africa there on 24 February 2010, the first double century in the history of one day international cricket, and the ground is named after Captain Roop Singh, the hockey player of Gwalior who won Olympic gold with India in 1932 and…

Shankar Laxman of Mhow, the cantonment town near Indore, kept goal for India in the Olympic Games of 1956 and 1964, both won, and of 1960, when India took the silver, and he received the Arjuna Award and the Padma Shri, a rare honour for a goalkeeper of that time.

Syed Mushtaq Ali of Indore was the first Indian to score a Test century outside India, at Manchester in 1936, and he played his domestic cricket in the Holkar side that dominated the Ranji Trophy in the nineteen forties; the national Twenty20 tournament carries his name.

The fifth edition of the Khelo India Youth Games was held in Madhya Pradesh in 2023, with events spread over Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Ujjain and other towns, and Mallakhamb, the state sport, was among the games included.