Gold medalist Indian players Achanta Sharath Kamal, Harmeet Desai, Sanil Shetty, and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran during the presentation ceremony of the table tennis men’s team event, at the Commonwealth Games 2022 (CWG), in Birmingham
Sixty-one medals, across 12 different disciplines, 22 of them gold. A fourth-place finish on the medal table. Say it softly, but say it nonetheless. India’s august Commonwealth Games 2022 is a changing of the guard. A blueprint for better times ahead. That’s despite it not even being as successful as the Games prior — when our athletes romped home with 66 medals and finished third at the table. The difference is the diversity. At the Gold Coast, India’s medals came from eight different sports, four fewer than this time. What’s more, shooting, India’s traditional medal filler, wasn’t part of Birmingham at all. That is perhaps the most heartening thing about the performance,” Anju Bobby George says. “In earlier times, we would get medals from shooting, wrestling, boxing, some from badminton... But this time sports that are usually out of the public eye have delivered medallists. It’s a good sign…”
The former long jumper, now vice president of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) has reason to be upbeat. Athletics delivered eight medals (1 gold, 4 silver, 3 bronze) at Birmingham, and while it didn’t threaten the all-time best of 12 from Delhi (2010), this performance was, in many ways sweeter than any before.
“It’s always easier to do it in front of a home crowd,” Anju says. “The support makes a difference, and even the level of competition makes a difference. Again, I would point to the diversity though. Look at the events on the track that we have got medals from, look at Avinash (Sable).”
And Sable perhaps epitomizes everything to love about India at CWG 2022. For those who missed it, YouTube will have to do it. Sable broke the national record in the 3000m steeplechase — something he has done a scarcely believable nine times, and thrice this year already — en route to silver in Birmingham. That old sports adage, “you don’t win silver, you lose gold”, couldn’t be less true for that race, where Sable broke a Kenyan medal sweep that spanned 24 years.
Speaking after, Sable rued missing out on gold but also displayed what a difference the desire to learn can play. “At the Worlds (where Sable finished a disappointing 11th in one of the slowest races ever) I made the mistake of following others, and doubting myself,” he said. A fortnight of guilt and heartache followed, and every step of the way Sable questioned himself and the team around him. “You start wondering why you are running if you can’t win,” he said. And despite missing out on an outright win by a mere .05 milliseconds, his silver was evidence that perhaps, just, Indian sport was genuinely capable of moving forward, multiple hurdles and water obstacles at a time.
top two countries were not here, but that disregards those that were the next in the rankings,” Siwach says. “It’s not a regular thing, remember…”
But while hockey could claim that, the reality is that the Commonwealth Games aren’t the pinnacle of the annual calendar. The best in the world often stay away. In sports like wrestling, weightlifting, and even badminton, often, India’s national competitions provide tougher tests. To qualify for the Games in wrestling, is, often enough, half the medal won.
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