2023 will go down in Indian sport as a year that promised much, while 2024 looks to be one full of possibilities. In cricket, the team played superbly well to make the World Cup final, before one bad day against Australia ruined their hopes of winning the world title. The team under Rohit Sharma also made the final of the World Test Championship but then were below par at The Oval. And at the end of the year, they were poor against South Africa at Centurion leaving plenty of unanswered questions going into the New Year Test in Cape Town. With a number of youngsters coming through the ranks in white-ball cricket and with the T20 World Cup just six months away in the US and Caribbean, 2024 could well be the year when Indian men’s cricket breaks the ICC trophy jinx.
Turning our attention to the women’s game, the Women’s Premier League (WPL) has helped set things up. With money and corporate support, the game is now viable. Needless to say, we need the team to be more consistent and recent Test wins against England and Australia could well be the starting point. The sport isn’t about charity. It now needs its own 1983 or 2011 moment and if that happens, there is no looking back in 2024. The manner on the defeat against Australia in the second ODI towards the end of the year spoke volumes of how far India still have to go – seven dropped catches, a botched run chase and little game sense.
In badminton, Satwik and Chirag and HS Prannoy had really good years. Both look set for Paris 2024 and it would be a surprise if India didn’t win an Olympic medal in badminton. Indian badminton, it is correct to say, is at a crossroads as we approach the Paris Olympics in July 2024. The story is hardly different for wrestling and boxing. Antim Panghal was almost there each time she fought at a major championship and was denied a place in the final of the World Championship by the referee while Lovlina Borgohain won a historic silver in the Asian Games but could well have won gold and made it bigger. Nikhat Zareen, on the other hand, suffered a shock defeat in the Asian Games semi-finals and that could just be the wake up call she needed ahead of the Olympics.
The real breakthrough, however, happened in shooting. Leaving the Tokyo 2020 disappointment behind, Indian shooters dominated the world stage in 2023. With the introduction of the mixed events, India has done well in both pistol and rifle and made the podium at every world competition they participated in. In fact, it isn’t an exaggeration to suggest that on current form, India stands to win at least 3 medals in shooting in Paris and anything less would be deemed an underperformance. 13 quotas have already been earned and India could be competing in 28 events in Paris, a first in Olympic history. It is no surprise that Sift Kaur Samra, world record holder and Asian Games gold medallist, was chosen as RevSportz Athlete of the Year- Female.
The other standout feature of the year is that the three men who dominate Indian sport at the moment are all united by a singular chain of thought – emphasis on process. While Virat Kohli continues to hurt because of the World Cup loss, he is aware that the process is what will eventually make a difference to him and the team. Taking his own fitness to a different level, his comeback was nothing short of spectacular. He also knows that making the finals of the World Test championship is the goal, for that is a logical culmination of the process that is now part of routine.
That’s where Kohli and Pullela Gopichand come together. As the national badminton coach gets up every morning at 4:30am to get to his academy, he is aware that things have not gone well for his students in the last few months. He also knows, however, that the process remains firmly in place and a change of fortune is a logical outcome in the future. If team Gopi, which includes Prannoy and Satwik-Chirag, are all on the same page in 2024, there is no reason why India can’t better Rio in badminton. And in the long term, Indian badminton looks in good health with multiple youngsters now knocking on the doors of the senior circuit.
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“We have some excellent players coming up the ranks and it is now on us to mentor them well and get them ready for the challenges in future,” says Gopi. The third musketeer is the ageless and peerless Sunil Chhetri. India started the World Cup qualifiers well with an away win against Kuwait and for the first time ever have a real chance of making the third round under Igor Stimac. Chhetri remains a beacon of hope for every footballer across the country going into 2024.
The other talking point of 2023 is a ‘youth takeover’ of Indian sport. If it is Esha Singh, Sift Samra, Mehuli Ghosh and Tilottama Sen in shooting, it is Shreyanka Patil in women’s cricket and Antim in wrestling. None of them, for the record, have touched 22 yet. And yet, each of them are now on the cusp of doing consistently well at the world level giving Indian sport new-found teeth and muscle.
As far as Olympic sports are concerned, anything under 10 medals in Paris wouldn’t be satisfactory. While this is a 50 percent jump in comparison to Tokyo, with some luck, India could touch double digits for the first time in the country’s Olympic history.
To end with a caveat: the one thing Indian sport needs to do better in 2024 is be a little more consistent. While we had a huge high in football when we beat Kuwait on home turf, we failed to build on the momentum created by making a mess of the Asian Games. The hockey story is the same. While the men have qualified for Paris, conceding goals in the last few minutes continues to plague Indian hockey, impacting consistent showings at international competitions as we have recently seen with the junior teams at World Cup level. The same is true for cricket as well, with India continuing to falter at the last hurdle.
While results aren’t always in one’s hands, what matters is what Neeraj Chopra, our greatest hope in Paris 2024, said to me in a recent interview. “Playing for India is a dream,” said Neeraj. “And when the dream turns real, the effort will have to be at its highest. Results are a logical outcome of the effort put in.”
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