Quidditch—one of the most popular fictional sports ever

Admit it, we all have fantasised riding broomsticks to catch the elusive snitch, the way Harry did it for the first time in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This fantasy sport that author J.K. Rowling came up with, in a hotel room in Manchester, after a quarrel with her then-boyfriend, is called Quidditch. I was one among the million kids who were excited to read the pages where Harry rides his Nimbus 2000 (Draco Malfoy used Nimbus 2001), gliding and whooshing through the crowd. The sport, which involves a quaffle, two bludgers, a golden snitch and six ring-shaped goals, is extremely rough and popular in the wizarding world.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Rowling had said, “The word Quidditch is not derived from any particular etymological root, but was the result of filling five pages of a notebook with different words beginning with 'Q'.” This is how one of the most popular fictional sports ever was christened.

The Quidditch reference is found throughout the books and films, starting from its introduction in the Philosopher's Stone, to Harry and Ron attending the Quidditch World Cup in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Harry's Quidditch skills are not just restricted to the field, they are used as important plot points as well. For example, Harry uses his Quidditch skills to retrieve the golden egg from Hungarian Horntail (a dragon in Goblet of Fire) and to capture the flying key in Philosopher's Stone.

Even though Rowling often complains, writing about Quidditch was the most harrowing experience of her life, the success and the need to detail the sport made her write the book Quidditch Through the Ages under the pseudonym of Kennilworthy Whisp.

Quidditch comes to town
Quidditch was played for the first time in the ‘Muggle’ world in Vermont, a state in the north eastern part of the United States. Vermont is also the second least populous state in the US. The International Quidditch Association was founded on the campus of Middlebury College, Vermont in 2010 and an inter-collegiate Quidditch match was conducted. This was the first registered Quidditch match. The association is responsible for organising major Quidditch tournaments and events around the world. Soon colleges around the country started to include the sport in versions suitable for them. The University of California has also added Quidditch to their list of team sports.

While it is played high in the sky in the world of wizards, the version for Muggles takes place on the ground. It is a combination of rugby and dodge ball; rules remain the same. Unlike Harry’s version of Quidditch in which the snitch is a tiny golden ball that flies around the field with great speed, the Muggle version of this game requires an actual person to be the snitch. This person wears a pair of golden-coloured shorts with a tennis ball inside a sock attached to the back of the shorts. When competing with another team, the snitch must be a third party to either team. This way, the game will remain as neutral and fair as possible.

In a book that narrates the battle of good versus evil, why was a trivial sport detailed extensively, garnering great attention and fan-following? Rowling herself had answered this question. “I had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate and signify its particular character and knew I needed a sport,” she said.