The Hindu : Sport : Bindra’s gold lights up an engrossing 2008

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Bindra’s gold lights up an engrossing 2008

A motley collection of fantastic feats, comebacks, farewells and controversies on display

— Photos: Sandeep Saxena, Mohammed Yousuf, PTI and AFP

SUPERSTARS, DAZZLING DEEDS: The Indian sports lover had a lot to cheer about in 2008 as talents like Abhinav Bindra, Vijender Singh, Sushil Kumar, Viswanathan Anand, Saina Nehwal and Sachin Tendulkar came up with impressive displays on the global stage.

New Delhi: A baby-faced Chandigarh shooter laying his hands on the most coveted piece of metal in the world of sport was the high point in yet another interesting year for Indian sports.

It was quite an Indian August in Beijing as Abhinav Bindra became India’s first Olympic gold medallist and in the same dizzy fortnight, Vijender Singh traded punches and Sushil Kumar demonstrated his full range of wrestling manoeuvres to bag bronze medals.

Elsewhere, the suave Viswanathan Anand defended his world chess championship crown, M.C. Mary Kom juggled family and boxing to win her fourth straight world title and a nomadic Jeev Milkha Singh earned four silverwares to rise to world No. 36.

Shuttler Saina Nehwal won the junior world title and broke into the top 10, while cueist Pankaj Advani claimed as many as eight National and international titles, including the prestigious IBSF world billiards championships in September.

IPL mania

All along, cricket kept the entire nation engaged and engrossed, with Team India reaching dizzy heights under a charismatic helmsman in Mahendra Singh Dhoni and a Twenty20 mania, post-Indian Premier League, sweeping the country.

Still, every other feat paled in comparison with the gold medal Bindra shot down in the 10m air rifle event on that memorable day of August 11.

Few expected the reticent shooter to strike gold but the ace marksman did just that to trigger euphoria back home where a star-starved nation found a new hero.

Fellow shooter Gagan Narang clocked up two perfect scores in Germany and Bangkok, while Ronjan Sodhi won the gold at the ISSF World Cup in Belgrade, having equalled two world records in double trap.

It was boxing’s annus mirabilis as Vijender, looking more a like chiselled model than a boxer, returned from Beijing with a bronze medal dangling from his neck.

Akhil Kumar and Jitender Kumar fell tantalisingly short of the feat but both played their role to put India in the global boxing map.

Equally impressive was Mary Kom’s feat as she returned from a two-year sabbatical to become world champion for an unprecedented fourth time.

Remarkable

Chess wizard Viswanathan Anand also ensured that he finished the year with his World Championship title safe and intact.

Anand’s 6.5-4.5 win over Vladimir Kramnik made him the first person to bag the title in three different formats — knockout (2000), tournament (2007) and matchplay (2008).

Following Anand’s footsteps, Abhijeet Gupta and Dronavalli Harika went on to become the under-20 boys and girls world champions respectively in Turkey.

Golf also witnessed India’s coming of age and Jeev Milkha Singh shone brightest in a year illuminated by some sterling shows by the Indians.

S.S.P. Chowrasia beat the likes of Ernie Els to win the Indian Masters and Arjun Atwal claimed the Malaysian Open and did enough on the Nationwide Tour to ensure his return to the U.S. PGA tour next year.

The season, however, belonged to Jeev, who won four titles on three different tours to open all the Major doors and a tied-ninth finish in the PGA Championship has instilled enough confidence to believe that he has the game to win a Major.

Jeev’s winning the Singapore Open not only assured him of the Asian Tour Order of the Merit title but also helped him become the first player to win more than $ one million on the Asian Tour.

Dhoni’s rise

Public mood, however, fluctuated with the fortunes of the Indian cricket team and even though old-timers rued the retirements of former captains Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble, Dhoni’s rise to captaincy in all three formats of the game proved a smooth transition.

Under him, India won a tri-series in Australia, thumped the world champion 2-0 at home in Tests, blanked England 5-0 in ODI series and beat it 1-0 in the subsequent Test series.

As Ganguly and Kumble perfectly timed their retirement to walk into a golden sunset, their comrade in many a battle, Sachin Tendulkar, however, felt some cricket was still left in him.

The little master eclipsed Brian Lara as Test cricket’s most prolific run getter, became the first player to score 12,000 Test runs and stroked a sublime century in Chennai to script India’s epic win against England.

Cricket scored over terrorism as Kevin Pietersen and other Englishmen returned to continue their India tour which was disrupted by the Mumbai terror attacks.

The Mumbai incidents, however, led to a diplomatic standoff as India cancelled its Pakistan tour.

The IPL proved the most radical development in the sport since Kerry Packer’s World Series of 1970s. The ‘who’s who’ of international cricket volunteered for a first-of-its-kind $43.54 million auction and at the end of a 59-match extravaganza, the crown went to Rajasthan Royals led by the wily Shane Warne.

Indian football, under coach Bob Houghton, also showed some promising signs and the AFC Challenge Cup win gave the team a berth in the 2011 Asian Cup in Qatar.

Kolkata played host to two soccer legends. German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn’s farewell match proved a massive success while Diego Maradona’s trip had the city under the grip of a football mania.

Tennis proved quite a let down and apart from Leander Paes’s mixed doubles triumph at the U.S. Open, there was hardly anything to cheer about.

Though Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi teamed up for the Olympics, eventual champion Roger Federer and his Swiss team-mate Stanislas Wawrinka put paid to their medal hopes. Paes succumbed to a players’ ‘revolt’ and surrendered his captaincy.

Sania Mirza, on her part, battled injuries and slid down the ranking chart.

Hockey in trouble

In hockey, nothing went right. The men’s team could not qualify for Olympics and then a sting operation showed the then Indian Hockey Federation secretary-general K. Jothikumaran apparently accepting bribe to include a player.

The International Hockey Federation refused to deal with the K.P.S. Gill-led IHF, which was eventually replaced by an ad-hoc committee of the Indian Olympic Association.

Roped in to revive the game’s fortune, a piqued Australian legend Ric Charlesworth eventually left India with bitter memories of the country.

Doping scandals

The world of Indian weightlifting was mired in doping scandals, selection controversies and administrative gaffes.

Egyptian coach Magad Salama quit in February, alleging doping by senior lifters and as if to prove him right, Kavita Devi was caught in the drug net before an Asian Championship.

Monika Devi was grounded hours before flying to Beijing on doping charges. It evoked consternation in Manipur and the north-east and the sports ministry had to set up a one-man commission to probe the issue. — PTI

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