Basque Pelota

 by Attish Das

Spain and France, and some Latin American countries like Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Cuba all play a sport called Basque Pelota, also known as ‘Pelota Vasca’ in Spanish and ‘Pelote Basque’ in French. The word given to this sport for this comes from a Vulgar Latin term pillota, meaning ball game, which supports the idea that the roots of this game can be traced to the ancient Greek and other older cultures.

This sport works with two teams with one or two players in each face to face separated by a line on the ground or a net. The team that serves bounces the ball, then shoots it using a bat towards a playing area of a narrow front wall, where the ball has to rebound between the low line and the highline, comparable to squash.

A team scores by playing the ball in such a way that the opposing team is unable to play the ball before it has rebounded off the playing floor more than once or playing the ball in such a way that it rebounds off the front wall and rebounds off the floor and outside the playing area.

A team may also score by the opposing team: hitting the front wall but either below the low line or above the high line or hitting the ball in time but failing to reach the front wall.

The following table shows the total number of medals given out from 1952 to 2018 in the World Championships.

Rank	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Spain	69	75	39	183
2	France	68	65	44	177
3	Mexico	50	41	32	123
4	Argentina	48	25	18	91
5	Uruguay	4	30	15	49
6	Cuba	3	5	16	24
7	United States	0	1	2	3
8	Chile	0	0	6	6

Overall, Basque Pelota is not a very popular sport around the world, however some countries do like to play it as a part of their culture. Not every sport is appreciated around the world, so raising awareness of these sports would help keep the games alive and not fade away from existence.