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It's been a while - to borrow a line from the song by Staind - since Indian sport has been able to hold its head as high as it did in the past year.

An Olympic year came by, and India won not one, but multiple medals. Over 22 yards, India beat Australia at Perth and then comprehensively won a test series against them after seven years. They also chased down test cricket's fourth highest fourth innings target against England and Sachin Tendulkar finally got the dream match winning hundred his critics had been latching at.

Force India put India on the Formula 1 map like Sushil and Jitender Kumar did with boxing and Hissar and Haryana. The Commonwealth Youth Games showcased the next generation as being ready to take over the reigns as they amassed an enormous 76 medals overall and sent India to the top of the table.

Leander Paes sliced, volleyed and deft touched his way to another US Open mixed doubles title at age 34 while Sania Mirza struggled and dropped out of the top 100 at age 22.

The IPL came, saw, and conquered. Players, Officials, Fans, TV Ratings, the works. If anything was here to stay, the IPL was it.

As for those Indian athletes who performed par excellence, we've separated the wheat from the chaff for you.

 

Vishwanathan Anand

Sport at its most fascinating usually involves a champion responding to a challenge. After the World Chess Championship in Mexico City (2007), a category 21 tournament involving the world's top fourteen Grandmasters in a double round robin event, Vishwanathan Anand was crowned chess's undisputed world champion.

Not, according to Vladimir Kramnik though. The Russian, who was the world champion in the match play format, refused to acknowledge Anand's victory. "I've lent Anand the title temporarily", he said.

Vishy, like most world champions with a pleasant persona, is only nice off the field, or the board, as the case may be, and payback for the sly comment would have been on top his agenda.

The unification match of 2008 became the stage to settle the debate and the response to the gauntlet thrown at him was stunning. The best of 12 match series began with a couple of draws but in the third game, Anand pulled off a fantastic victory with black pieces to take an early lead. He then won the fifth game, again with black pieces and registered a win in the sixth, practically finishing the contest by the halfway stage with a 3-0 lead.

Kramnik responded with a victory in the tenth game, but a draw in the eleventh ensured Anand's claim to the title would never carry an asterisk again, win the World Championships as he did in all three formats- knockout, round robin and match play.

He also defended his titles at Linares and the Rapid Chess World Championships at Mainz, an event he's won nine times in a row now!

The significance of his achievements may be often lost due to the fact that chess isn't the friendliest of spectator sports but Anand's role in being the inspiration for and nurturing the seventeen other Grandmasters of India is where his greatness lies, extending well beyond his magnificent triumphs in 2008.

 

Abhinav Bindra

Here is what it takes to win an Olympic Gold medal. World class training facilities, the best equipment, the most seasoned of coaches, and supreme belief in one's athletic skill. One look at the Indian contingent at the Beijing Olympics and it would have seemed logical that Abhinav Bindra should be at the top of the list of contenders. Scion to a wealthy business family, a Director of an organization at the age of 25, he seemed to possess the mindset and the wealth required to bring home the metal.

But potential and achievements in the context of Indian sportsmen has often been a gap too wide. The transition from the bronzes of K D Jadhav and Leander Paes to the silver of Major Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore to the gold of Abhinav Bindra had taken fifty six years in the coming, and in this light, the corny ‘where no individual Indian athlete has gone before' crown sat just right on him.

For ten years, he had been trying to draw India's attention, creating record after world record in the 10m rifle competition, but to the hard to please authorities and spectators, no Olympic medal meant no recognition.

But in sports, one afternoon can be all that it takes to make a career unforgettable. And on a balmy afternoon in Beijing, it did.

 

Saina Nehwal

Eighteen can often be a difficult age to handle. You are a teenager yet an adult. You can drive but you can't get a drink in a pub. Well, legally at least. You move from the cocooned environment of high school to the big bad world of college. Or you happen to be Saina Nehwal and though these issues affect you, they're in a totally different context.

In an era when racquets are increasingly handed to babies in cradles, eighteen can be make or break time for sportswomen. It is the last year at the junior stage and the smell of professional competition lingers, waiting to suffocate those not prepared for the step up, and enticing those who already belong.

So let's look at her report card for 2008. First up, the Olympics. Three game thrillers were the norm, one result was favourable, the other was not. Leading 11-5 in the third game of the quarterfinal against Maria Kristin Yulianti, Saina lost fifteen of the next sixteen points and the bronze medal, but was still the first Indian woman to get into the quarterfinals.

The Nehwal express then just chugged upwards. In September, a 21-8, 21-19 dismantling of Li Ya Lydia Cheah at the Yonex Chinese Taipei Open gave her the distinction of being the first Indian woman shuttler to win two Grand Prix titles.

October brought along the Commonwealth Youth Games, and gold it was this time around.

In November, Saina put the one trophy missing from her junior tour into her cabinet by winning the World Junior badminton championships.

Lastly, she cracked into the top ten rankings and produced a stunning performance in the Masters Series to win back to back matches on the same day to qualify for the semifinals.

Verdict: Saina Nehwal is good to go professional. Correction: With only her racquet doing the talking, as is the case now, she's ‘great to go' professional. 

Mahendra Singh Dhoni

India's captain for the T20 World Cup in 2007 had been announced, and Yuvraj Singh wasn't a pleased man. As a senior member of the young side that had been selected, he was a leading contender but lost out to Indian cricket's man who can do no wrong.

Reputations and trust are built on small moments, and as the apocryphal story goes, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, in his first team meeting as captain, told a young side that Yuvraj Singh was the man they should look at for inspiration. The best player's ego was massaged, the team was united, and they went on to win the World Cup.

When Sachin Tendulkar refuses the Indian captaincy and suggests your name instead, you've got to be special. And 2008 was Dhoni's year.

The last time India beat Australia in both a Test and ODI series in the same year was 1997/98, the year of Tendulkar's ‘Desert Storm', when he dismantled Shane Warne's challenge in the test series in India and the ODI series in Sharjah. Only this time, India won the tri-series in Australia for the first time ever and wrested back the Border-Gavaskar trophy in emphatic fashion, and no small credit goes to Mr.D.

In his first test as captain, he scored 92 and 68, made crucial bowling changes that worked and won the Man of the Match award. Importantly, the spirit in the team, both in the ODI tri-series and the tests was brilliant right through to the end and the results reflected the change in the mindset.

Dhoni's performances in ODIs in the last season also landed him the ICC ODI player of the year award - the first Indian to get one - and under him, India hasn't lost a single test.

The formula behind this invincibility hasn't been worked out yet, and while Getafix the Druid may not have the answer, Harsha Bhogle's comment is probably a good pointer. "His team members seem really happy to play with him and when that happens, all the strategy and action plan become secondary", he said.

The invincible record may go, but if Dhoni manages to maintain the infectious enthusiasm that pervades the national team these days, 2009 should be a great year to watch Indian cricket.

 

Jeev Milkha Singh

He had a twelve foot birdie attempt to clinch victory. To become the first golfer on the Asian Tour to win more than one million dollars in a single season. To beat Padraig and Ernie, the best golfers on tour in the year of the one-kneed Tiger. Considering the last twelve months he'd had, with trophies on the European, Japanese tours and a Top-10 finish at a major, you'd bet on him to make it. He missed.

Padraig had a five footer to take it to a play-off. Ernie a fifteen footer. Considering the year they'd had, you'd have staked all on a few more rounds of golf. They missed. Half a dimple is what sometimes separates the best golfers, and we're not even talking about their cheeks here. Only this time, Jeev Milkha Singh was on the other side. No dimple, but just a very relieved smile.

In many ways, 2008 looked like the break even point of his career. Over the last three years, the graph has been curving upwards, and the firsts have kept stacking up. First Indian to rank in the Top 50 Golfers of the World, First Indian to play in the Augusta Masters. First Indian to lead at a Major Championship.

This time around, the swing remained the same, but allied to consistency, it became a deadly weapon. The mind hardened too, and no where else was this more evident than in the Nagashimo Shigeo Sega Sammy Invitational Cup on the Japanese Tour, where he battled the personal tragedy of his wife delivering a still-born just before the tournament to go ahead, win it and dedicate it to his family.

The moment of the year though, came not from the steadiness of his putter but from a carefully thought out utterance he made to Shiv Kapur at the PGA Championships. "I'm ready to win a Major", he said.

Ten years ago, when he qualified for the European Tour, such a thought from an Indian golfer would have been sniggered at, even brushed off as wishful thinking. Today, it'd be treated with respect, and that, is the true measure of Jeev Milkha Singh's impact.

 

Photograph Copyright: Bollywood Sargam (Bindra), Marco Bonavoglia (Anand), Chandru (Dhoni)