Six Months to Rio, Six the Benchmark!

Its six months to the day for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games to kick-off and till date about 61 Indians have attained the qualifying standards to compete in them. There will be a few more after pending qualifiers of some sports are concluded. The final qualification opportunity for Asian shooters concluded this week by the way right here in New Delhi, It was heartening to see some sports loving nations like Singapore and Malaysia win their first ever quotas in the sport for Rio right here in India's capital city. The toil and tears which go into such massive human efforts is often missed by the mass-media in general, overeager and rightly so, to project successes closer home. India added four more Rio quotas to their existing eight to ensure a record participation of the sport in all Olympics and if performances of the last four years are anything to go by, then shooting should once again return as the country's most successful sport from the games. However we should have done more in Shooting and the 3-4 'near miss quotas' could come back to hurt us really hard at the end of the games. Read on to find out why.

The problem this time is that the benchmark is Six medals! Are we confident enough to surpass the mark which every nation progressing in the right direction should aspire to do as a bare minimum? This space a while before the London Games had emphatically stressed on Six medals as a certainty.! This time there is nothing that makes us overtly optimistic....even of touching that mark, leave alone bypassing it. Why?

By and large over the last four years if you have followed this space, you would find that the Olympic sports that have performed at a top international level for India continue to be the ones which were already an area of strength in the last games. Archery, Badminton, Boxing,Shooting, Tennis and Wrestling. The worry is that over the past four years in Archery, Boxing and Wrestling we have kinda stagnated as far as top international results are concerned, instead of being on an upswing. Combined we probably have four quality athletes ranked in the lower top 10s of the world across the 35 odd competition categories which will give away medals at the Olympics.

Shiva Thapa is perhaps the highest ranked at number two in his boxing weight category and Deepika Kumari and Mary Kom are probably the other significant names on that list but they have either remained at same performance levels or have gone down with age. To expect three medals from the above three disciplines would be being too optimistic given that the world is too young and fast nowadays to wait for athletes past their prime to to make lasting mark. Unless of course if you are an Usain Bolt! That leaves you with Shooting, Tennis and Badminton. Shooting has the potential to be a game changer for this trio if lady luck goes India's way at Rio and these three disciplines alone can then help us surpass the London mark or at least touch it. At their best your shooters can give you four medals, Shuttlers two and Tennis one to easily go past London. And then anything else we get will be a bonus:))

Golf is the other sport where we would be sending a quality side and have been doing really well at the top level in recent times. However its a debut for the sport and all the top guns of the world will be giving it their all so it would be very harsh to expect a medal out of the sport. Anirban Lahiri and SSP Chawrasia should make it on present form and rankings.

GK's Call!
And I know its a shame and it continues to be for decades now but we should not be expecting any medals at all from the Men's and Women's hockey team who have also qualified for Rio.-GK's Call!

If I were to be negative and add my personal experience to it, I would have to say that it is really sad that our internal political equations come in the way of progress of Olympic sports in this country....and so it is in any walk of life here. Here is hoping and continuing to hope that we reach double figures at least at Tokyo 2020! At the very least if we have any dignity left as a nation!-GK's Agony!

The way to look at it is obviously being positive. What we do have in the forthcoming games is Quality Olympic experience of winning medals. Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Saina Nehwal, Mary Kom, Yogeshwar Dutt and most probably Sushil Kumar give you that comforting company which previous Indian Olympic squads were deprived of. We need to cash in on this, hope that their presence energizes everyone to give off their best and that is our best chance to come back with our best ever performance from Rio!

Hockey Wins a Top Medal after Ages!

On a day when the national sport of hockey won a top international medal after three decades, I felt compelled to write:) There is nothing like a good day in hockey for us 'Indo-sportanatics'. For the record India bagged the Bronze in the Hockey World League Finals beating Holland in a penalty shootout in Raipur. This is after 1982. Jesus! Well, as mentioned in these posts, the signs were looking good for a while and it seemed only a matter of time. Of course, the new rules and our new found economic clout have also helped a lot lately. This medal however, will give the Indian Olympic squad bound for Rio in August of 2016, a whole new vigour! When hockey leads, India roars.

What a Pre-Olympic year it has been for Indian sports! One will have to believe that one has seen India building strong squads across Olympic sports for some time now and the labour has started to bear fruit. This column safely predicts that the previous years tally would be matched, if not surpassed and that in itself will be no mean feat.

Here is a peek into some of the strong Indian squads set for Rio:

Tennis:

• Strong doubles teams which include the legendary Leander Paes, world number 1 ladies doubles player Sania Mirza and multiple ATP tour title winner Rohan Bopanna give India a great chance of a medal in the sport at Rio. Somdev Dev Varman has been patchy in singles and so has Yuki Bhambri, but the doubles specialists should be able to hide this weak link and help sneek in a medal, given the format and number of medals on offer.

Shooting:

• Should give us the maximum medals from one discipline. Experienced medal winning Olympians like Abhinav Bindra and Gagan Narang are leading the squad and look hungry for medals. There is good depth and healthy competition within the squad making it a big squad of top class multiple international medal winners. Medals can be expected from unexpected sources.

Badminton

• This column has long hailed the squad as world class and it has only gotten better in the Pre-Olympic year. Saina has missed her much coveted top class world title by a whisker twice and PV Sindhu has reinforced her mercurial status over and over again. Srikanth after a subdued year seems to be peaking at the right time and Kashyap also seems to be building up towards top fitness during Rio. The bench strength and doubles teams have also been solid performers internationally and another medal from this sport can be a certainty.

Golf

• The top 5 finish in a Major by Anirban Lahiri means that the Indian golfing team to Rio has at least one current world class golfer in its ranks. Indian golf in general has had a strong year if the combined earnings is any kind of parameter to go by and with the right blend of youth and experience, on their day, they can be a very capable team.

Wrestling

• Led by the legendary Sushil Kumar and his mate Yogeshwar Dutt, younger turks like Narsingh Yadav and Amit Kumar are the ones to watch out for in the men's section. The Phogat sisters in the women's section also can spring a few surprises.

Boxing

• Never to be left behind in the Indian Olympic movement, the boxing squad has lost legendary veteran Vijender to the pro arena but still has a formidable squad with the likes of Shiva Thapa, Devendro Singh and Vikas Krishan capable of great deeds. And who can forget the legend of Mary Kom among the women boxers, not too forget the 'sure-to-be-hungry' Sarita Devi.

Hockey- we proved we can be in the top three of a world competition today.

So we have seven world class squads and other squads which are every improving like archery and weightlifting and can give us an Olympic medal any day if everything goes our way.

Therefore a repeat of the six medals of last time is a given. Can we get more??

'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.

The real concern in Indian sports lately has been with events off the field of play

To my obvious deligth, the previous reflection on the Indian badminton squad in this space, got forcefully reiterated at the recently concluded World Badminton Championships in China. India had as many as three participants in the QF stages of the individual men's & women's event put together and guess what!!! P.V.Sindhu returned with a bronze in her first worlds, eventually going down to the eventual world champion, but not before 'taking out' two top class chinese in their den. That makes it two right calls in this space after the six olympic medals predicted way ahead of time:)

Aditya Mehta's World Games gold in snooker was the other standout achievement in Indian sport for the intervening period and the Indian hockey team can match that with a win over Korea in the Asia Cup final tomorrow. The hockey squad after a long time has displayed a different approach and stuck to it throughout the tournament for a change, to reach this far. The style though a bit dour, is refreshing and definitely more professional and should be persisted with, eventual results not withstanding. The first post of this blog coincided with the hockey team's Azlan Shah win in a B-grade tournament held that year. This win though will be world class if it takes shape.All the very best as usual.

The real concern in Indian sport lately has been events off the field of play, more than that of those on it.The administration of the Indian Olympic Movement is in shambles and the country is very close to being out of the next olympics, as it till date, stands suspended from the parent International Olympic Committee (IOC). The Sports Minister they say, has been pro-active, but results are still not forthcoming. Can it be fate or conspiracy that today, when we have around six strong olympic sports squads, we are no longer part of the movement.Why should sports and sportspeople suffer because of political middlemen wanting to milk the youth connect and therby destroying the aesthetics of sports? Look what they did to cricket!!!

It is not for us to dvelve too much into pessimism or negativity around Indian sports in this space.We've had a lot of it in the past and have overcome them to reach some kind of sporting credibility globally through the passion and focus of our sporting fraternity and the deeds of our sportspersons.The administrators at the centre of the storm today are not a part of that fraternity as much as they would have us believe they are. Let us never let them forget....despite not due to!!!

So lets march along. The men's Indian basketball team for example has come a long way if peformances in the recently concluded Asian championships are anything to go by.Its not the actual resutls again, but the approach and the shape of the team is what caught the eye, and concentrated efforts might yield results in the long run. Two girls from Andaman and Manipur are on their way to a 50 day coaching sting with the top class Korean coaches in Korea. After their performances in the recently concluded Asian juniors, this can only help them improve.The Women archers led by Deepika returned with yet another World Cup gold in recurve.Its also important to consistently deliver world class performances over a period of time, occassional setbacks not withstanding.

So yes, there is still lots to look forward to in Indian sports as it keeps re-inventing itself on the global stage. That there is a needless controversy over India's highest sporting honour the 'Khel Ratna', another off-field event, with sportspersons reportedly lobbying for the award, actually augurs well for Indian sports in my view, as it means there are more and more sportspeople today who can cite performances on a world stage, to actually believe they deserve the award. The concern there lies with the fact that such charcter traits were always known to be alien to atheletes in general.

Badminton becomes India's first non-contact individual endurance sport to have a world class squad

Today 17-year old PV Sindhu won the Malaysian Open badminton, which in today's setup of the sport is considered a Grand Prix Gold. Not very sure what these terms mean actually, but I am guessing it is two levels below the top level, but not by much.Considering the top level has only five tournaments (WC, Olympics, ALL England, Asian Games & Asian Badminton Championships), this would not be easy to win. Growing up in the mid eighties and nineties, an Indian sports fan wouldnt dream of any Indian winning the Malaysian Open of all tournaments.
Malaysia was always a big badminton power (even today the men's world number one is a Malaysian), and therefore an open championship bearing that country's name would always attract top players from across the world, trying to win it.Yes, Prakash Padukone, Syed Modi and Pullela Gopichand, all had their moments in the sun, but it was still a dream to expect Indian winners in such tournaments. Because, in every individual sport, we might have had the odd superstar, but we never ever had depth in our squads, to realistically expect such pleasant moments.
PV Sindhu's win today confirms that like boxing, shooting and wrestling, the global Indian badminton squad is ready to hunt in a pack.And this is not a conclusion reached at by one win alone.If  we consider the consistent performances of Saina over the years, now Sindhu and also track the global exploits and progress of the men's squad consisting the likes of Purapali Kashyap, Sai Praneeth, RMV Gurusaidatt, Anand Pawar, Srikanth and Ajay Jayram over a period of time, we can be sure we are on to a good thing. Pullela Gopichand, something tells me can take huge credit for this acievement.
What gives the Indian sports fan even more hope, is that badminton is a non contact sport, yet extremely physical, demanding extreme levels of individual fitness and endurance. And it is played by the whole world seriously. Shooting, when it comes to individual fitness and endurance levels, is not as demanding, although it does demand the sportsperson to be fit enough to be able to have high levels of focus and concentration.Therefore, to become a superpower in a sport (yes, India can clain that today) like badminton, is perhaps the greatest sporting achievement of modern day independent India.

Cant Wait Any Longer....Bring On London 2012

Savour this folks !!! The Women Archers in particular, have consistently battled the champion Koreans over the last two years and even beaten them a couple of times including in a big final very recently; The World beating Indian Shooters haven't let their guard or performance down one bit;The Men's Hockey team have had a spirited year; Saina has won two titles already this year; Sania and Bhupati just won the French Open mixed; Krishna Poonia and Vikas Gowda have reached new horizons and The Boxers are a world force to reckon with for sometime now. That London 2012 is going to be India's best Olympics ever looks certain. The anxiety for us freaks however is related to the magic question, 'By how much?'

Its anybody's guess if everything falls into place, but when it comes to the Olympics that is one thing you cannot do....Hazard a Guess!!! What is most pleasing however as an Indian lover of Olympic Sport is the fact that there is so much to look forward to this time and with so much 'hitting home'. There will always be the Bolts' and the 'Super' Dan's as top priority, but nothing beats the passion of the rendering of the Anthem and the Flag flying high witnessed by a world audience in a sporting arena. The lump in the throat is still inevitable. Hope to see a few such moments as opposed to only one last time. Wishing the squad loads of luck and best wishes. Bring on London 2012