Coming of age

M.S. Unnikrishnan on how 2008 has been a watershed for Indian sports

The year has been good for Indian sports. Viswanathan Anand and Abhinav Bindra blazed an unprecedented trail to take the Indian sports to new heights of glory. The sang-froid created by their success stands to serve the national sports for a long time to come.

Hitherto, the international sports fraternity had looked at India with disdain, but the successes in various disciplines this year has given a nice makeover to our earlier image.

From left: Abhinav Bindra, Pankaj Advani & Viswanathan Anand

Anand cemented his top status in chess with his third world title. But it was in the Beijing Olympics that our sportspersons came on their own despite odds. While Abhinav Bindra shot an individual Olympic gold to create history, the bronze medals of Vijender Singh (boxing) and Sushil Kumar (wrestling) gave a dynamic turn to their discipline as well as sports in general, outside the ambit of cricket.

Boxing received a further boost when India fetched four bronze medals in the World Cup in Moscow through Akhil Kumar, Jitender Kumar, Anthresh Kumar Lakhra and Dinesh Kumar. For once, Olympic sports and chess took precedence over cricket, though it continued to hog media space for varied reasons.

The exit of Anil Kumble from international cricket, the elevation of Mahendra Singh Dhoni to the Test captaincy, retirement of India’s most successful captain Sourav Ganguly, India’s triumphs against Sri Lanka (in ODI series), Australia and England, and the calling off of the Pakistan tour, provided enough fodder to keep cricket on the front burner. And the smashing success of the inaugural Indian Premier League T20 Championship showed that there was still plenty of money to be made from cricket.

Jeev Milkha Singh continued to mature on the golf course and struck some memorable wins to be counted among world-class pros. He bagged the Nippon Series JT Cup in Tokyo in December under tremendous emotional stress. During the championship his wife Kudrat delivered a still-born child, but still Jeev bagged the title to prove his mettle.

Earlier in the year, Jeev had won the Bank of Austria Open European Tour event, the Singapore Open of the Asian Tour and the Sega Sammy Invitational in Japan, besides finishing fifth in the Indian Open in Delhi.

Pankaj Advani ambled to fix a “double” in world billiards and snooker. The player maintained India’s great tradition as a power to reckon with in cue sports brought about by icons like Wilson Jones, Michael Ferreira, Geet Sethi, Aravind Savur et al when he won the International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF) titles in both time and points formats. He had won three world titles in billiards and snooker in 2005, the same year in which he was also bestowed with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, at the age of 19.

In tennis, Leander Paes kept India’s flag flying in the Grand Slam circuit. He teamed with Zimbabwe’s Cara Black to win the US Open mixed doubles title and a runner-up finish in the men’s doubles with Lukas Dlouhy. Leander and Black beat Britain’s Jamie Murray and American Liezel Huber in straight sets to capture the title, which was his fifth mixed doubles crown in the Davis Cup. Leander also made his entry in the sports administration when he was elected as one of the seven vice-presidents of the Bengal Tennis Association.

Though Sania Mirza failed to make much impact in the women’s tennis, her fellow Hyderabadi Saina Nehwal carved a definite niche for herself in women’s badminton. The two-time national champion became the first woman shuttler to enter the quarterfinal of the Beijing Olympics. She also bagged the Chinese Taipei Open title and broke into the top 10 in the International Badminton Federation ranking. Saina also breezed into the semi-final of the $500,000 prize money, elite eight-player World Super Series Masters at the Kota Kinabala courts in Malaysia at the year-end. The Junior World Champion, whose parents are from Haryana, thus signed off the year on a high note, with the promise of doing well in future.

Anand, who is yet to hit 40, yet again, proved that he is the best in any format of chess — knockout, round-robin, match play, etc. He was the world champion twice before, though in different formats. This time, however, he convincingly decimated Russian Vladimir Kramnik by 6.5-4.5 points in their 12-game face off, with one round to spare, in Bonn (Germany). Kramnik had been carping, after beating Gary Kasparov, that Anand could never be considered a ‘true’ world champion till he conquered him. Anand inflicted such a humiliating defeat on Kramnik that the humbled Russian was forced to concede the high ground to the Indian Grand Master in every sense. Anand, thus, became the second GM, after Bobby Fischer in 1972, from outside the Soviet bloc to win the world title.

Bindra’s gold in 10-metre air rifle at Beijing was a unique feat, too. No Indian has ever won an individual Olympic gold before. India’s previous eight Olympic golds had come in hockey.

Though India had won silver medals in shooting (Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Athens-2004), weightlifting (Karnam Malleswari, Sydney-2000), and bronze medals in tennis (Leander Paes, Atlanta, 1996) and wrestling (K.D. Singh Yadav, Melbourne, 1952), no Indian sportsperson had come close to wresting an Olympic gold till Bindra broke that barrier, and barged into the record book. It was skill and hard work that took Bindra on the road to Olympic glory, though his father Dr A.S. Bindra’s liberal financial support helped him realise his dream, and that of a billion-plus Indians.

However, for the first time, in an ironic twist, the hockey team failed to even qualify for the Olympics.

There has always been something evanescent about Indian successes in international sports arena, but 2008 has ignited much hope and expectations. India will witness frenetic activity in the next couple of years with New Delhi slated to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the World Cup hockey, and a year later the cricket World Cup, with Pakistan, Sri Lanka aand Bangladesh as co-hosts.

Hopefully, the feats of our sportspersons in various events at the international level will only spur other Indian players to strive for greater glory.