India, a nation of a billion and more has often been humiliated on a world stage in sporting arenas. Not any more though as 2010 provided enough glimpses of what to look for in the future from our athletes. The sportsmen in all fields did well and after a long time it wasn’t only cricket that brought smiles to millions of sports fans.
The year, to start of rejoiced none other than Sachin Tendulkar, who as he has always done, enthralled the country with yet another record. Records though for him now should mean little, but this one was special. Not many would have thought that a man of 36 years (at that time) would have the abilities to score a double ton in a 50-over game. Age as a lot of people have said is just a number for the maestro.
He continued to enthrall throughout the year and was the batsman with the most number of runs in Test cricket and also a feat that should now be over and above all competition ever in the future, a half-century of Test tons. The best journalistic question for this machine now should be whether scoring a ton has not become monotonous for him because of the regularity with which he scores them. It is certainly a matter of pride to be a part of a generation which has witnessed something of this calibre.
The Sachin Tendulkar facts though weren’t surprising. He has done such things time and again, and for the rest of the time he will play, he will continue to mint runs, win matches for India and create records which would be impossible to match. What was surprising and being worth it was India Shining on the athletic track. It was tough even imagining Indian girls winning a 4x400 track and field event. Not only they did it in India’s biggest sporting spectacle Commonwealth Games, they repeated the feat in Asian Games in Guangzhou.
In both the events, the Commonwealth Games and later in the Asian Games record-breaking medal hauls brought cheers on the faces of millions of this nation. Thirty eight gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and 14 Gold at Guangzhou were unbelievable and completely unexpected to say the least.
The sportsmen and women of the year surely were Sania Nehwal winning four top tournaments and a Gold at Commonwealth Games and following her closely has to be India’s Hercules, Sushil Kumar, who did everything right. Every time he landed on the mat, the opposition was floored. His best though was winning the World Championship in Moscow. Som Devvarman won two Gold medals at the Asian Games and proved why many say, he is a serious one for the future. Vijender Singh after his failure at the CWG proved his mettle at Asian Games and Ronjan Sodhi did his bit to justify why Indian shooters can be worlds best on their day.
But apart from all this, what was really ecstatic was the performance of Indian athletes. First in Delhi and then at Guangzhou, Indian athletes did what none would have expected. Preeja Sreedharan, Sudha Singh, Ashwini Akkunji, ios5eph Abraham, Bajrang Lal Thakar, Krishna Poonia and another few made sure they won’t be left unrecognized by Indian crowds the next time they are walking on the road.
It was during the 14-day of Commonwealth Games that for the first time, India’s non-official national sport, cricket went to the backstage for a while and other stars hogged limelight and deservingly so, as in another first of its kind, India came second in the medals tally of this multi-nation sporting event.
Off the ground though the story wasn’t all that rosy. In cricket we saw Lalit Modi being scuttled out of BCCI, only to be termed a fugitive in a matter of months, after being crowned as the maker of the world’s biggest sporting league just a few days back.
In games apart from cricket as well the muck was well placed. Administrators took away all the negative limelight prior and post the games with multi-crore scams in everything related to the organization of the mega event. Such was the messy state of affairs just a few days prior to the games that a lot of top athletes pulled out and a few countries also threatened not being a part of it. CBI now has taken over the investigations and we can only hope that the guilty will be brought to justice irrespective of his position.
Overall a great year for Indian sports and it isn’t difficult for us to now imagine that with the right sort of corporate funding and effective grassroots and local sporting projects we can really be a sporting nation. Yes, this dream will take time to come true but the starting grunts have been made.
By Rohit Sakunia
