In sports such as football (soccer), basketball, bandy and water polo, dribbling refers to the maneuvering of a ball around a defender through short skillful taps or kicks with either the legs (football/soccer), hands (basketball), stick (bandy) or swimming strokes (water polo). The purpose of such an action is to bring the ball past a defender legally and to create opportunities to score.

Association football

Dribbling is often invaluable especially in the third part of a pitch or at the wings, where most attacks take place. Dribbling creates space in tight situations where the dribbler is marked (closely guarded by a defender), and the dribbler can either score or create scoring chances after a successful dribble. However, dribbling, if poorly mastered and used, may result in the loss of possession either when the ball is intercepted or tackled by a defender.

When used appropriately, a good dribbler is often hard to dispossess; unsuccessful tackles (which do not reach the ball) may result in a useful free kick situation, a yellow card for the offender, or both.

Early references to dribbling come from accounts of medieval football games in England. For example, Geoffrey Chaucer offered an allusion to such ball skills in fourteenth century England. In the Canterbury Tales (written some time after 1380) he uses the following line: "rolleth under foot as doth a ball"1. Similarly at the end of the 15th century comes a Latin account of a football game with features of modern soccer which was played at Cawston, Nottinghamshire, England. It is included in a manuscript collection of the miracles of King Henry VI of England. Although the precise date is uncertain it certainly comes from between 1481 and 1500. This is the first account of an exclusively "kicking game" and the first description of dribbling: "2he game at which they had met for common recreation is called by some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport, propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet... kicking in opposite directions". It is known that dribbling skills were a key part of many nineteenth century football games at English public schools with the earliest reference to ball passing coming in 1863 rules of the The Football Association.

Basketball

James Naismith's original rules said nothing about dribbling, merely stating that passing the ball was the legal way of advancing it. Players soon developed the strategy of "passing to themselves", which Naismith himself both endorsed and admired for its ingenuity, and which evolved into the dribble as it is known today.