The 2020 Olympics is coming to an end and so is our hope of a significantly improved performance.
There is the usual lament about India’s performance. Several WhatsApp warriors and Facebook experts cry and bemoan the lack of gold medals in our kitty and how India lacks the killer instinct or why we are like that only.
But, as usual, they miss the point. The point about India’s revival and resurgence in the world of sports. Each Olympic event pushes this story a few inches further. Like the historic Hindu rate of growth, this is too minuscule to be seen in the events but, hell, with the power of compounding, we could become a sports superpower a few decades from now.
Irrational Optimism? Maybe, but no harm is identifying the green shoots - the players who were the slivers of hope and source of happiness.
This is the story of a Braveheart and two Bronze winners - who characterised the much vaunted spirit of never giving up and demonstrated what resilience means.
This is the story of Savita Punia, PR Sreejesh and PV Sindhu.
If you bumped into Savita at an airport or a railway station, chances are that you might not recognise her. This is despite her representing India in more than 200 matches. But, put her to guard the goal and she would make every striker and their goal scoring prowess irrecognizable.
The Indian women’s hockey team was not a very fancied one. In the Rio olympics in 2016, it hadn’t won any match. And in Tokyo, it had the most embarrassing of starts - a 1-5 lashing at the hands of Netherlands.
It looked like deja vu, like Rio all over again. But, while we fans gave up on the team, they themselves did not. Slowly, steadily and surely, they inched their way to the quarter finals bringing us face to face with the dreaded Australians. While the prediction was a Kangaroo wash, Savita had other thoughts. While Gurjit Kaur scored India’s only goal, Savita saved a whopping 9 goals, 8 of them Penalty Corners. If it were not for her brilliance, we would never have smelt a bronze opportunity.
A loss to Argentina, made very narrow by her presence meant we were up against Great Britain who had walloped us in the pool matches.
In a match that had more twists and turns than a David Baldacci thriller, Great Britain won with a very narrow margin. The reason- our braveheart Savita, who rarely wilted under the British onslaught, saved no less than 12 goals. An incredible 12 goals! Take away her saves and it would have been a Rio 2016 all again.
Much like cricket, a keeper is not much romanticised in the hockey field. It is the forwards, the drag flickers, the penalty corner convertors who get talked about. But ask any true hockey fan who won the bronze for India and the answer would be an unequivocal, categorical and uniform one - Sreejesh.
India had started the olympic quest rather dishearteningly, losing 1-7 to the Aussies (the same score line by which Brazil lost to Germany in the 2010 Football World Cup and India had lost to Pakistan in the 1982 Asian Games) a score that can demoralise and decapitate any team’s spirit.
But this Indian team proved they were made of a different mettle. Brushing aside the the calamitous start, India scored and saved with gumption to reach the Bronze playoffs.
While the forwards scored brilliantly, the Sreejesh did even better, staving off many German counter attacks. And last and the most important one, a penalty corner with 6 seconds to go.
Like Savita, Sreejesh was the difference between a splendid tournament and a mediocre one.
Enough has been written about Sindhu. A gazelle with nerves of steel and instincts of a cheetah, she created history. Her greatest success in this year’s Olympics? Being able to erase from memory a one sided semi final with Tai Tzu Ying and coming up with her A game in the Bronze play off.
A phoenix is a mythical animal that rises from the ashes, but in Savita, Sreejesh and Sindhu, India has found it real phoenixes.
The players who can trump odds and rise far above the cynicism around them and come back strongly when every one else writes them off.
Each of them would certainly inspire the next generation of Indian sportsmen and women to think and dream big. And to imagine that beating the odds and turnarounds are not impossibilities.
