My Tribute to Indian Sports on our 10th National Sports Day!
It has been 3 weeks since the curtains came down on the Commonwealth Games (CWG) 2022 in Birmingham and the more I look back and reflect upon India’s 61 medal haul, it just astonishes me how far we have come as a nation in terms of progressing across multiple sports since our Independence.
In the 16 CWG editions that India has participated in since 1934:
we won our first medal when Rashid Anwar won bronze in wrestling in the 1934 games in London
~ we broke into the Top 5 for the first time in 1990 when we went past the 30 medal mark for the first time and won 13 golds out of 32 medals whilst dominating wrestling and shooting. Thereafter we have ended in the Top 5 every time except in 1994 & 1998 in Canada and Malaysia respectively.
~ till date, we have won a total of 564 medals, of which a staggering 134 medals (24%) have come from shooting alone, an event that was missing from this edition.
~ we achieved its best ranking of #2 when Delhi hosted the Games in 2010 and it bagged 101 medals, which included 38 golds; 27 silvers and 36 bronze medals.
Out of those 101 medals, India had won 49 medals in sporting disciplines that were missing from the Birmingham 2022 games, and thus if you remove these from the tally, the performance at the recently concluded games stand out even more.
Without disciplines like shooting, tennis, and archery, and with the Indian contingent missing its ace performer, Neeraj Chopra, the nation’s first individual Olympian gold medalist, the 22 golds, 16 silvers, and 23 bronze medals carry a lot more weightage and showcases the progress of Indian sports.
To me, the significance of the results lies not in the medal tally but in the qualitative impact the 200-odd athletes had across the 16 sporting segments they participated in:
A. There were 4 events where India enjoyed a ‘Double Podium’
~ a massive rarity:
Eldhose Paul & Abdulla Aboobacker with Gold & Silver in Triple Jump
2. Lakshya Sen & Kidambi Srikanth with Gold & Bronze in Men’s Badminton Singles;
3. Bhavina Patel & Sonalben Patel with Gold & Bronze in Women’s Singles in Para Table Tennis
4. Sharath Kamal & Sathiyan Gnanasekaran with Gold & Bronze in Men’s Singles Table Tennis
B. In a sport called Lawn Bowls, which most of the nation would neither have known or possibly even considered as a ‘sport’, India bagged gold in the women’s four and silver in the men’s four categories.
Rupa Rani Tirkey, Pinki, Lovely Choubey, Nayanmoni Saikia, Sunil Bahadur, Navneet Singh, Chandan Kumar Singh and Dinesh Singh have given the nation a new sport to play, follow and cheer about!
C. In wrestling and weightlifting, Team India dominated, stamped its authority, and swept the floor with the best nation honors with 12 and 10 medals respectively;
Not completely surprising though but it sparked such joy to see the likes of Mirabai Chanu, Jeremy Lalrinnunga, Achinta Sheuli, Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik, Deepak Punia, Ravi Dahiya, Vinesh Phogat, and Naveen wear gold on the podium and give us multiple moments of pride to see the ‘tiranga’ go up and listen to our national anthem.
D. The 2 veterans in Sharath Kamal and Saurav Ghosal proved that even in sport, age is no bar and one can continue to pursue excellence in one’s own craft, just like how a Jimmy Anderson has aged like fine wine with the art of swing bowling!
Sharath Kamal had won his first CWG medal in Melbourne in 2006 when he beat a fast-paced, local favourite, William Henzell 4–3 in a high-octane match to win gold; 16 years later the man went on not only to repeat the feat in the single’s edition by beating Liam Pitchford 4–1 but also won gold along with a 24-year-old Sreeja Akula in mixed doubles; gold for the men’s team event and a silver in men’s doubles alongside Sathiyan Gnanasekaran.
4 medals in one single edition and a total of 7 CWG medals in his lifetime ~ quite a heavy cabinet that must be!
35-year-old, World #15 in squash, Saurav Ghoshal, beat defending champion and his mentor’s son, James Willstrop, against whom he had a lopsided 1–8 win record, to break the jinx and win India’s first ever singles medal in squash.
He also won bronze in the mixed doubles along with Dipika Pallikal, with whom he had won a silver in the previous edition in Gold Coast in 2018
E. On the other end of the age spectrum, 3 young ladies and a gentleman who were extremely impressive were:
1. 14-year-old Anahat Singh, who is Asia’s top-ranked U15 squash player and had a winning start in the first round;
2. 19-year-old Gayathri Gopichand, who won bronze along with Treesa Jolly in the Women’s doubles in badminton, a feat that would have made her father, the legendary Pullela Gopichand rather proud
3. the arduous 24-year old Sreeja Akula, who poured her heart out in every match she played — she did win gold in the mixed doubles with Sharath Kamal but was inconsolable after losing the bronze medal match 3–4 in very tightly fought contest.
4. the 20 year old Lakshya Sen, who smashed his way through to win gold in men’s singles in badminton; his meteoric rise on the global stage over the last year has been fun to watch as he has gone onto beat Olympic gold medalist, Viktor Axelsen and world champion, Loh Kean Yew.
F. Like Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal at the Tokyo 2020, the discipline that brought in the most surprising joy was athletics, the sport that was the 3rd highest in terms of medal hauls with India winning 1 gold, 4 silvers and 3 bronze.
Along with the triple jump double podium episode highlighted above, by now the video showcasing Avinash Sable’s 3000m steeplechase victory and Priyanka Goswami’s image holding her “Ladoo Gopal” on the podium post her 10,000m race walk have gone viral.
More than his personal best and national record-setting silver medal, what gave us goosebumps was that Avinash threatened Kenya’s Abraham Kibiwot, the eventual gold medal winner, right till the end and was just 0.05 seconds behind him and this ensured that for the first time in the last 6 editions of the CWG, the Kenyan monopoly on the podium for this event was challenged and broken
Tejaswin Shankar & Murali Sreeshankar became the first ever Indian athletes to win medals at high and long jump respectively; the former had to fight internal battles against sports administrators to get a clean chit to even compete in the competition whilst the latter had to overcome a bout of life-threatening appendicitis.
G. 26 of the 61 medals were won by women, including the mixed team events, including 9 out of the 22 golds and medals in 3 sporting events: a gold in lawn bowl; a silver in women’s T20 cricket, and a bronze in women’s hockey.
That’s rather significant and gratifying to see in a nation where unfortunately women face numerous hurdles across professions (we have a tragic 58% employment gap between men and women and the latter’s contribution to GDP is merely 17%, half of the global average!), especially in sports.
Kudos to role models like PV Sindhu, Nikhat Zareen, Bhavina Patel, Nitu Ghangas, Meerabai Chanu, Annu Rani, Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat, Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Savita Punia, Vandana Kataria, Salima Tete, Sushila Devi and the rest for battling all odds to persistently compete and inspire other women to follow suit.
H. 21 out of India’s 28 states contributed to the medal tally and it was good to see the otherwise socio-economically backward or neglected states like Haryana (38%), Jharkhand (13%) and the North Eastern states (10%) contribute more than 62% of the nation’s total medals.
Whilst they are all part of one national squad, one hopes that regions receive further investments, support and encouragement to drive higher medal returns in the future.
I. At Birmingham 2022, Team India celebrated many firsts and these numerous “Roger Bannister” moments will augur well as the nation prepares for Paris 2024.
Beyond the heroics of the women’s team at lawn bowl, Saurav Ghoshal and Sharath Kamal, the triple jumpers from Ernakulam, the long & high jump winners:
Vinesh Phogat became the first Indian female wrestler to win 3 consecutive CWG gold medals
Annu Rani became the first Indian javelin thrower to win a medal at a CWG event.
Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy won India’s first gold at the Men’s Doubles in Badminton
PV Sindhu won her first gold medal at a CWG event
Beyond the CWG, the excitement of the upswing of Indian sports was visible outside of Birmingham as well in Colombia where Barath Sridhar, Priya Mohan, Kapil and Rupal Chaudhury clinched a silver medal by bettering their own Asian record at the U20 Athletics World Championships in Colombia; Rupal scored another personal best to win bronze in the women’s 400m race.
Back home in Chennai, India hosted the Chess Olympiad for the first time, where the women’s team comprising of Koneru Humpy, R Vaishali, Tania Sachdev, and Bhakti Kulkarni won India’s first-ever women’s team medal at a Chess Olympiad.
Beyond this squad, in the individual category, teenagers D Gukesh and Nihal Sarin won gold; Arjun Erigaisi won silver and R Praggnanandhaa won bronze whilst R Vaishali, Tania Sachdev and Divya Deshmukh bagged bronze.
As India commemorates its 75th year of Independence, it is heartening to see that over the last decade the government has realized the nation’s potential in multiple sports through the TOP scheme; independent private organizations like GoSports Foundation, Inspire Institute of Sport, and OGQ sponsoring and backing specific athletes and new sports media startups like RevSportz and The Bridge going all out to provide the much-needed comprehensive coverage for our athletes, their struggles, trials, and triumphs!
Sports can not only provide professional, and economic opportunities and is a fantastic way to exert soft power on the global stage as we have witnessed with our growing might in cricket, but it also offers an opportunity to drive changes in terms of gender parity, our attitude towards health and fitness and as a tool for education.
Hence, I sincerely hope that as a nation we continue to strive and champion this cause as individuals, families, and society and by the time we celebrate the centenary year of our nation’s independence, we can be regulars in the Top 3 at multi-disciplinary sporting events like the CWGs and the Olympics!
Happy 10th National Sports Day.
Jai Hind!
