Sometimes your best isn't enough.
Most sportsmen prefer to use the tricks of the game couple with great techniques and little effort .
And they do get the best out of it.

For a young person competitive sports is very frustrating. Especially if you are not very athletic.

When coaching very young kids. Its important to remind them to always have fun. You should find the right balance when 'to push' or 'not to push' hard. Since their young bodies are still developing and will always tire faster. Its important train them mentally: "To Always Fight Win" and "Never Give Up."

In a game where there is a mismatch and your team is the underdog. Even if you have a slightest chance of winning. You should always play to win and never give up. By playing defensively and making it hard for the other team to score. If you could frustrate the opposition to play badly. You might even score an upset.

A player should learn to lose with respect. If your team lost but always fought hard till the end. Even if you lost by a huge margin. You can alway held your head up high knowing you gave your 100%.

It would be a shame and a disrespect to any sport to play less than your best. If you find your team losing and your players not fighting hard enough. It would be best to just concede the game, go home and stop wasting people's time.

Good sportsmanship requires that one always performs to the best of their abilities. Good sportsmanship is often defined nowadays only from the point of view of the losing team. Good sportsmanship involves knowing how to do your best always, never expecting the other side to lower their standards for you. Winning gracefully and losing gracefully as well.

Promoting an idea that good sportsmanship involves lowering one's performance for the sake of not hurting the feelings of the other team is ridiculous. In so doing, you are insulting the potential of the opponent and are removing the very important element of drive and desire to improve for the other side.

If sports, nations, and individuals were to have applied that logic in our human history, well, there wouldn't be a human history, there'd be no humans, we never would have evolved to our current state.

What I've found in situations like that, where it has become obvious that one team is way better than the other, is *not* to ask players on the better side to play dumb, but to have them play with a handicap.

i.e., Have the better side play with one or two fewer players. It makes it a real game again, because once you've got things balanced, everyone on the court has to play their best again.

What won't work so well is if you tell the weaker team to add extra players above the ordinary count, because when you get too many players on the court it just turns into a chaotic mess.

The handicapped side won't mind taking a handicap, because they'll get a kick out of the honor of people seeing that three of them can play as good as five on the other side.

Their only issue will be the guys who want to be on the court but can't, but the handicapped team can sort that one out amongst themselves by figuring out how they're going to swap out, which adds an aspect to the game that wasn't there before, which is how to play fair with their own team-mates!

my answer is give you best every time doesn't matter what will be the outcome of game.a good sportsman is one who gives his best all the not when there is a strong opponent.i also like to play cricket and football and i always try to give my best, lots of time i failed to do good in the matches but i always give my best which i can do.

Years ago, my freshman basketball team was awful. We didn't win a single game. Worse yet, we had just six players (I went to a very small school).

At a tournament, we were playing and most of our team fouled out. As we got down to fewer and fewer players available to play, the coach on the other side had his team members match the number of players we had. There was no doubt they were going to win, but they played us three on three and two on two rather than five on three or two.

Most of that season is just a painful memory, but that game stands out. The coach understood good sportsmanship and taught it to his players. Everyone gave their best, but when the odds were stacked against one school or one player, the coach took steps to even the odds.

It's better to play with opponents of a roughly similar level, and so not have that issue. That's usually achieved with leagues and divisions and so on. However, if two hugely mismatched teams do play in serious competition, I'd suggest the following points are relevant...

- It's hard in sports to turn your abilities and moves on and off on demand. Your body learns habits, so for example what you routinely do in practice is what you'll do in a big game. Therefore you don't for example hit the ball less hard because it's only practice, or because the opposition is not so good today.

- However part of playing well is using your energy wisely. If the game is in the bag, whoever the opposition, sometimes it makes sense to just keep control of the game without going all out to rack up a huge score.

- In serious competition, you're not responsible for the opponents feelings. Dealing with those feelings is part of what sport is all about, and hopefully an opportunity to grow and mature. If it's a friendly game, or a coaching session, maybe it's a different matter.

EDIT:

Btw, if you are asking what is better for the weaker side to do (play all out, or just go through the motions knowing defeat is inevitable), much the same logic applies...

- Don't get into bad habits. Habits are hard to change.

- Use the game as a learning opportunity, both in terms of the game, and in terms of handling the emotions that come with the game. If your players learn emotional resilience in the face of adversity and defeat they'll have learned a life lesson that's more valuable than any sporting victory.