Trisha Ghosal and Rohan Chowdhury in Hangzhou
When the goal – 100 medals at the Asian Games – was announced and a slogan coined, quickly followed by multiple promos for TV, one of the common reactions was cynicism tinged with derision. Before winning 70 medals in Jakarta in 2018, India had only thrice crossed the 50-medal barrier, and two of those (1951 and 1982) were home Games. A century seemed a big ask for a country that had finished behind Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Iran and Chinese Taipei in the medals table in 2018.
No one’s sniggering now. The target has been reached with the kind of unerring precision the compound archers showed on the range. Just to put it into perspective, the first time China hosted the Asian Games, in Beijing in 1990, the Indian contingent limped home with a solitary gold and 23 medals in all. China had 183 golds. In sporting terms, the two countries weren’t even on the same planet.
How did this transformation happen? A clue could be found in the lithe figure of Jyothi Yarraji, sandwiched between two Chinese runners and nearly cheated out of a place on the starting blocks because of her rival’s false start and one-eyed on-field officials. She overcame a poor, nervous start to find her stride and rhythm, and the silver she won was testament to a new sporting culture that doesn’t back down and isn’t burdened by an inferiority complex.
But given his status as the shining light of India’s sporting system right now, it makes sense to begin with Neeraj Chopra. Second to throw in the men’s javelin on Wednesday night, he let out a celebratory roar after the release. Like every top athlete, he just knew. The spear landed not far from the existing Asian Games record of 89.12m. Yet, after a farcical delay that lasted beyond a quarter of an hour, the judges decided in their wisdom that the distance couldn’t be registered. Neeraj was asked to do it all over again.
For Kishore Kumar Jena, his javelin teammate, it was a foul that never was. Despite the line judge gazing somewhere else and not at the arc, the red flag went up, much to the bemusement of Jena, who has been at least three inches behind the line. Neeraj intervened straight away, went up to the judges and ensured that the flag was changed to a white one.
Athletes heading into the final of a competition are like finely tuned race cars. The slightest disturbance to the routine can be disastrous. Lesser athletes might have wilted in the face of what happened inside Hangzhou’s showpiece stadium, but the Indian javelin duo responded with three incredible throws. Jena, who had never previously gone past 85m – the distance needed to secure an Olympic quota – twice smashed his personal best, finishing with alongest throw of 87.54m. On another day and against another field, that would have meant gold. But Neeraj uncorked a season’s best of 88.88m in between Jena’s throws to secure top spot on the podium at a major event yet again.
If indeed there was some sort of conspiracy to upset the concentration of India’s champion athlete, as Anju Bobby George, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) vice-president, alleged, it failed miserably. The inconvenience only seemed to spur both Neeraj and Jena to greater heights.
On Thursday morning, HS Prannoy was tussling for a place in the semifinal, and a guaranteed medal, in what has been a largely disappointing badminton campaign for India. PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth, once at the vanguard of Indian badminton, had made quarterfinal exits, while Prannoy himself had pulled out of the 2-3 defeat to China in the team final because of a sore lower back.
Having taken the first game, Prannoy had two match points in the second. But Malaysia’s Lee Zii Jia saved both and went on to take the game. And it was he that had two match points at 20-18 in the decider. By then, you could see Prannoy grimace at the end of each rally. His feet were moving purely from muscle memory and the stretches at the net must have been sheer agony. But with disappointment staring him in the face, Prannoy dug deep to find reserves he himself probably didn’t know he had. Four straight points, and he collapsed on the court and then flung his shirt to the floor before an emotional Pullela Gopichand, the national coach, embraced him.
Almost predictably, Prannoy ran out of puff against China’s Li Shifeng after a hard-fought opening game, but the very fact that he was out there, instead of lying in bed with a brace, was an indicator of how badly he wanted to be atop the podium. If he can stay fit, Prannoy is very much India’s best hope of a badminton medal in Paris, alongside the dynamic doubles’ duo of Chirag Shetty and SatwikRankireddy.
Last, but certainly not least, the archers in the women’s compound event final found themselves 82-86 down after nine arrows against Chinese Taipei, who had upset South Korea, the favourites, in the semifinal. But the trio of Jyothi Surekha, Aditi Gopichand and Parneet Kaur responded with 13 perfect 10s and two 9s to take gold by a single point. Aditi is 17, and Parneet 18, while Jyothi is a relative veteran at 27. The strength of will and composure they showed with a gold at stake was something Neeraj would have been proud of.
It would be amiss not to mention the hockey team as well. They had their well-documented blowout in a home World Cup earlier this year, but bounced back to win Asian Games gold while scoring a scarcely believable 68 goals in seven games. That included a 10-2 shellacking of traditional rivals Pakistan.
For decades, Indian sport was an underperforming joke. In Hangzhou, we have seen what can happen when the latent talent is harnessed properly. This is just the beginning. The tiger is well and truly ready to roar.