'Acche Din' for the Indian Sports Fan!

For someone who has lived and breathed sports for 30 years and who even today takes the time out from all the regular responsibilities of a 'working urban middle class family man' in India, to write about it (very few Indians across the world do actually), you couldn't be living in better times. The now proverbial 'Acche Din' is surely here for them!

The six months since yours truly last summed up the progress made by India in the international sporting arena for you, have been nothing short of exhilarating. It all reached its zenith on a 'Super Indian Sporting Sunday', November 16, 2014 when Kidambi Srikanth, a young 21-year old from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, stunned (hold your breadth) Lin Dan (yes, The Super Dan Himself!) in two straight games in the China Open Super Series final of all places.

Four bullet points should be enough to express the enormity of the 'event' for Indian sports.
1. Lin Dan is and forever will be the greatest human being to have played the sport of badminton
2. He might be 31(only), having come out of retirement (but that too two years ago), but the best of the best have always, almost always had it tough with the 'Dan' in big finals and have almost always come out vanquished, at best bruised. The nonchalance of the Srikanth performance given his age and top level experience (this was a first SS title) is spine-chilling!
3. Even on current form Lin Dan was ranked higher than Srikanth
4. This was in the lion's den-in China itself!

The parallels for this event in Indian sports could be drawn with the likes of the unprecedented eight Olympic gold run for Indian hockey, Khashaba's Jadhav's wrestling bronze in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, the 1983 world cup win in cricket, Michael Fereira's world championship win in cue sports, Abhinav Bindra's shooting gold in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and in badminton itself- Prakash Padukone's All England triumph in 1980. Those are all game changing moments and mark my words this one will be for Indian badminton and Kidambi Srikanth for sure and for Indian sports in general as well. Simply the audacity of it from a young Indian! This will rub off among the many talented youngsters out there pursuing their passion, now with far better access to sporting infrastructure and corporate support than ever before. Not to suggest that there is enough, but definitely far more.

Saina Nehwal also won the women's section of the China Open singles, but c'mon- we kinda expect her to win a couple of SS titles at least. She needs to go higher and bigger and sooner rather than later. Great sportswoman that she is, she deserves to give herself one final push.

Earlier in the year, India also participated in two important international multi-sporting events, namely, the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games. For the record India finished fifth and eighth respectively in the medal rankings, which were both down from the previous editions, but having watched the performances, I would not read too much into such minor deviations, which nowadays are also affected with frequently changing international rules and regulations. It should satisfy us for the moment that the Indian squads are now trying to be very competitive and professional internationally, and consistently at that, and the direction of progress is bang on. A lot more disciplines have started to show results which points at all round development of sport.

The year in particular has also been fantastic for the National sport (and a personal passion) of men's field hockey. After the euphoria of the Asian Games gold and the subsequent automatic qualification for the Rio Olympics, came the pleasing news of the squads Test series victory down under in Australia of all places. Now Australia has been the nemesis of Indian hockey on more than one occasion in the recent past and psychologically we were just down and out against them. To take them out at home was no mean feat. I will still stay on the side of the critic though as many more years of consistency is still required by the national squad in international hockey to reclaim the glory days. Till that happens it will help the squad to have some constructive critics.

And of course in the era of leagues, two more came up on the domestic sporting landscape both with very different outcomes as of now. The Hero Indian Super League for football did not take much time to be a raging hit in its debut year, as it was very well planned, invested, marketed, organized and executed. A special note of gratitude goes out to all the veteran and playing international footballers who with all their dedication and professionalism have made the league a resounding success.The same cannot be said about the Champions Tennis league mooted by the legendary Vijay Amritaraj. The pull outs didn't help as well.Whats pleasing about all such efforts is that with them enhances the chances of local talent getting better and better, as well as more and more of them getting attracted enough to pursue sport professionally. Money in sport nowadays, anyways cannot be a complain.

Vishwanathan Anand at the moment has the opportunity to drive a fresh bunch of talent towards chess if he manages to beat Magnus Carlson for the world title, which is currently underway. This is Anand's second shot at Carlson and champion is ahead by a point with two games to go in the duel. Anand could never be better than Kasparov. He needs to be better than Carlson.You wouldn't like to leave the slightest doubt would you?

Good news also continues to flow for India from the golf courses across the globe, more from the Asian region to be specific. There was an unprecedented period of three Sundays on the trot, when Indian golfers won on the Asian tour. Anirban Lahiri's win in the Venetian Macau Open was followed up by SSP Chowrasia with the Panasonic Open in Delhi and Rahsid Khan on the following Sunday bagging the Chiangmai Classic in Thailand. Lahiri then rounded off a fantastic year by qualifying for the European Tour through Q-school in Girona, Spain. What was also heartening was the unearthing of another talented golfing youngster who goes by the name of Subhankar Sharma. The amateur almost secured a dramatic victory at the Panasonic Open, but eventually finished fourth. Not a mean performance by any standards. Subhankar is barely 18, but the maturity and poise he displayed on the golf course is very encouraging. Wish him all the best!

There was inspiring news from the international cycling velodromes, although this one is situated in Delhi itself- now that is so unprecedented that even unprecedented sounds like an understatement. In a fairy tale of sorts, 2004 Tsunami survivor 19-year old Deborah, who hails from the serene Andaman & Nicobar islands struck gold in the women's 500 metre time trial at the AC Track Asia Cup 2014. I at least had never heard of any cycling medals of any international worth before this one.

So there is definitely a lot of buzz around Indian sports at the moment. Apart from the traditional strength areas, a lot of new sports are gaining in levels of performance and popularity which is excellent news. Rio by the way, will not be very far away and therefore now is not the time to relax but to increase efforts even more. Here's for a great Pre-Olympic year for Indian sports.

Sports and sportspersons are immune to political developments

A roundup of Indian sports these days, is seldom without more than one piece of exciting news. Not sure whether the return of the country to the Olympic fold in February this year after having to face the ignominy of participating almost the entire length of the Winter Olympics in Sochi under the Olympic flag, would fall in the same category. Although it was always a foregone conclusion, but it still had to be accomplished and the basic strenghts of Indian democracy finally shone through on this one. We can dismiss it as a nightmare, a rude jolt, which should hopefully augur well for the future of the success of India as a sporting nation.

Heena Sidhu and Manavjit Singh Sandhu would be the rockstars of this roundup, each doing their bit to keep enhancing India's status bit by bit as a global shooting powerhouse. Heena became the first Indian shooter to be ranked number one in the world, when after a string of consistent performnces including a world record breaking feat at last year's world cup in Munich and a silver in this year's edition, she scaled the International Shooting Sport Federation's (ISSF) 10m Air Pistol summit in the first week of April. A week later, Manavjit stunningly took out two former Olympic champions to grab the ISSF Shot Gun World Cup Trap gold to become a two time World Cup winner.Incredible feats both. 

In between the legendary Leander Paes completed the small matter of wrapping up his 14th Grand Slam doubles title (eight men's and six mixed doubles) partnering Radek Stepanek at the US Open in September....AT THE RIPE YOUNG AGE OF 40 TO BECOME THE OLDEST MAN TO WIN A GRAND SLAM TITLE EVER. A Kolkata guy, this work ethic is rarer than hailstorms where he grew up.Salute!

Also laudible were the efforts of P.V.Sindhu, who enhanced her growing reputation as a top woman's shuttler by bagging a bronze in the always closely fought and high quality Asian Badminton Championships and Sania Mirza picking up a WTA doubles tour title with partner Cara Black. Sania though is now resigned to play for her passion and career, called out in this space quite some time back. 

Two tournaments of great interest, one in progress and one yet to begin are sure to capture the imagination of the country's sports buffs even as this roundup is being drafted. The Thomas and Uber Cups, literally the badminton equivalent of the FIFA world cup finals, are being played in the country's capital.It is a pity that such high quality badminton, taking place in your own country and there isnt enough noise around it.....even in the sports pages of the national media. And India does play regularly in this one amongst a total of 16 countries who qualify for it. It is a real shame. 

The Men's squad ended its campaign in the group stages finishing third in their group, but the Women have already booked their places in the last eight stage of the tournament. With two world class shuttlers it is kinda expected from the women, but from here on the BIG GIRLS IN THE BUSINESS come into the picture and it will be boil down to your 'strength of meditation versus mine' as is usual during the business end of every top class sporting event. A medal is not an unrealistic proposition for this squad.

The FIH Men's hockey world cup is scheduled to start in Hague at the end of this month and as usual ardent followers the national game will be hoping against hope for nothing short of a miracle- a win. As usual, we do have a top class team with great players, but it is the basics of modern hockey like consistency and good defense which has been our bane for over three decades now and nothing in recent times has suggested that they are near extinction.

All the best to the two national squads as usual.

The newest entry into the olympic fold, the sport of golf, has been the other source of great joy for Indian sports fans in recent years. Particularly heartnening has been the rise of AnirbanLahiri, a 26 year old Bangalore pro golfer. The lad is into his seventh year-still early days, as a pro and is currently perched comfortably at the top of the gritty Asian Tour (although its still early days) with earnings close to US $245,000 for the current season already. Amongst the golfing fraternity in India this is how the top players by calibre are spoken of in descending order: Jeev Milkha Singh, Arjun Atwal, Jyoti Randhawa,Gaganjeet ,Bhullar, Shiv Kapur..... Anirban though has managed to steel the thunder from all of those big names in the recent times. 

He just seems to be the guy born for the big moments. Picture this.....A hole in one on his Open debut, four Asian Tour titles, hero of a sensational comeback which was key to Team Asia drawing the inaugural Eurasia contest against a Europe Team boasting of the legendary Miguel Angel Jimenez, major winner Graeme McDowell and European Tour leader Thomas Bjorn and an 18 feet Eagle on the last hole to win his first title outside India. Also, I havent seen an Indian golfer register so many mid-60 or under rounds which such glaring consistency. The prayer is only a whisper at the moment.

India was in the grip of a political fever from the beginning of the year.No conversation could afford to miss out on a discussion on who would possibly come to power post the largest general elections of the world which concluded with the results on May 16. It was almost as if the world had come to a standstill. In the midst of all this, three young men, Anirban Lahiri, Rahil Gangjee and S.S.P.Chowrasia-can ostensibly be called the 'Bong connection in Indian Golf' (Anirban is a Bengali by birth and Rahil and S.S.P are Kolkata boys through and through)- and the talented Rashid Khan of Delhi, nonchalantly picked up a cool Rs 3 Cr approximately amongst themselves in the first five months of the year, with Anirban garnering the larger share. They have been playing some very pleasing golf consistently and seems to be enjoying travelling and being together. If this carries on we have a pretty decent chance to fight for a medal at the Olympics.

Just goes to show how far away a sportsman's mind is from issues which appear to be larger than life for us.Relations have soured, friends have been blocked/unfriended on facebook, abuses have been hurled in the heat of the campaign and these three just going about enjoying themselves playing the sport they love so much.There is a lesson of life to be learnt.

It is not something new that I have discovered but merely reiterating the purity of sport.Sports and sportpeople across the globe have had to undergo far greater turmoil but have always allowed the sport to lord over politics.So when the Afghan national team beat the Indian national team in football recently, purely as a sports buff you felt a lump in your throat even though you were not from Afghanistan. The stories of African long distance atheletes overcoming inhuman living conditions, Jesse Ownes showing the iron will and resolve to triumph in front of Adolf Hitler, Serbian tennis stars and Sri Lankan athletes living and succeeding through war have been there since time immemorial.The learning from all this I beleive is that the greatest instrument of peace in this world could only be the widespread penetration of the sporting spirit, the sporting culture.Maybe global leaders and statesmen recognize this, which is why they have often used sports to build bridges.