1948
The first post-Independence Olympic gold medal came in London for hockey. Between 1928-80, India won eight gold medals.
1950India was invited to play the football World Cup—it didn’t materialize due to lack of funds. The country has never played at the World Cup.
1950Abdul Bari got into the British Open squash final, losing to Egyptian Mahmoud Karim.
1951Goan Lavy Pinto got gold medals in the 100m, 200m sprints when Independent India hosted its first Asian Games in Delhi.
1952Kolhapur’s Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav, just 5’5’’ in height, won the first individual Olympic medal—a bronze in freestyle bantamweight wrestling at the Helsinki Games. Two Indian women, Nilima Ghose and Mary D’Souza, participated in the Olympics for the first time.
1952Gool Nasikwala won the women’s singles and doubles in the inaugural Asian Table Tennis Championships in Singapore.
1956One of football’s most memorable performances came this year with Neville De Souza’s hat-trick against Australia in the Melbourne Olympics. India finished fourth, its best result in football in the Olympics.
India won its sixth and third consecutive hockey gold medal in the Olympics.
1958Billiards player Wilson Jones became India’s first world champion in any sport.
1958Lila Ram was the first Indian wrestler to win a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games. This year, India got 22 gold medals in Birmingham.
1960Ramanathan Krishnan, still India’s best-ever singles tennis player, reached the semifinals at Wimbledon. No compatriot has bettered this result since in Grand Slam singles.
1960A wax statue of Milkha Singh at Madame Tussauds India. (Image: Shutterstock)Milkha Singh missed a bronze medal by 0.1 seconds in the 400m sprint at the Rome Olympics.
1962India got its second football gold medal in the Asian Games, defeating South Korea 2-1 in the final at Jakarta. Their previous gold was in 1951.
1962Padam Bahadur Mall was the first boxer to win a gold medal in the Asian Games—at Jakarta.
1971India, led by Ajit Wadekar, beat hosts West Indies in a cricket Test series (1-0). The visitors won the second match at Port of Spain while the four other matches were drawn.
1971India beat England in a three-match cricket Test series 1-0. It was their first series win in England.
1975India won the hockey World Cup in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, defeating Pakistan 2-1—their only world title in the sport.
1980India got its last Olympic gold medal in hockey, in boycott-hit Moscow.
1980Prakash Padukone at the 2009 Tata Open Championship in Mumbai. (Photo: Mussarat Kang via Wikimedia Commons 3.0)Prakash Padukone won the All England badminton title—only one other Indian has won this since.
1983Kapil Dev’s unbeaten 175 against Zimbabwe, after coming in to bat at 17-5, is considered one of the greatest ODI innings.
1983India improbably won the 60-over cricket World Cup, beating the West Indies in the final.
1984-85India won the Benson and Hedges World Championship of cricket in Australia.
1985Geet Sethi won the IBSF World Amateur Billiards Championships beating Bob Marshall.
1986(from left) Track and field athletes Pranati Mishra, P.T. Usha and Rachita Mistry. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)P.T. Usha won four gold medals in the Asian Games in Seoul, two years after narrowly missing a bronze medal in the Olympics.
1986India’s best-ever volleyball player Jimmy George catalyzed the team to a bronze medal at the Seoul Asian Games.
1986Swimmer Khazan Singh Tokas won a silver medal in the Asian Games in the men’s 200m butterfly—a rare medal for the country in this discipline.
1987India hosted the Reliance cricket World Cup, the first time the event moved out of England.
1987Sunil GavaskarSunil Gavaskar became the first cricketer to score 10,000 runs in Tests.
1987Vijay Amritraj led India into the Davis Cup team tennis final.
Viswanathan Anand, 19, became India’s first chess Grandmaster, starting a revolution in the sport. India now has 73 Grandmasters (GM) and 21 Women Grandmasters (WGM).
1989Limba Ram led India to a gold medal in the team event at the Asian Archery Championships—he got a silver in the individual event.
1990India won a gold medal in men’s kabaddi at the Asian Games where the sport was introduced.
1996Leander Paes won India’s second individual Olympic medal after 44 years, a tennis bronze in Atlanta.
1997Mahesh Bhupathi (Image: PTI)Mahesh Bhupathi became the first Indian to win a Grand Slam title—the French Open mixed doubles with Rika Hiraki of Japan.
1998Shiva Keshavan qualified for the Winter Olympics in Nagano in the luge event. He competed in six consecutive games, till 2018.
1999Anil Kumble took all 10 wickets in an innings, against Pakistan in Delhi, becoming only the second man after England’s Jim Laker in 1956 to do so.
1999Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won the French Open doubles—they followed that with a title at Wimbledon.
1999Bhaichung Bhutia (second from left)Baichung Bhutia became the second Indian to play professional football in Europe, for second division club Bury FC. Mohammed Salim had played for Celtic FC in Scotland.
2000Karnam Malleswari’s bronze in the 69kg category weightlifting at Sydney was the first medal for an Indian woman at the Olympics.
2000Viswanathan Anand won his first FIDE world chess title beating Alexei Shirov in the final.
2001Pullela Gopi Chand won the All England Badminton Championships—only the second Indian after Padukone to do it.
2001V.V.S. Laxman (281) and Rahul Dravid (180) pulled India out of trouble after following on against Australia, one of their greatest Test wins.
2002Koneru Humpy became the first Woman Grand Master (WGM) from India. The 15-year-old was the world’s youngest WGM.
2003Anju Bobby George won a bronze medal in long jump in the World Athletic Championships.
Anjali Bhagwat became the first Indian woman to get a gold medal at the ISSF World Cup, winning the 10-metre-air rifle event.
2004Rajyavardhan Rathore (Image: Twitter/@Ra_THORe)Rajyavardhan Rathore won India’s first individual silver medal in the Olympics—in the men’s double trap event in Athens.
2004Virender Sehwag scored India's first triple century in Tests —at Multan, Pakistan.
2005Narain Karthikeyan became the first Indian to drive in Formula One.
2005Pankaj Advani won the IBSF world billiards title in Malta beating Geet Sethi. He became the first player to win across two formats, points and time.
2005Sania Mirza won a WTA title in Hyderabad, her only singles title.
2007Jeev Milkha Singh, who joined the European Tour in 1998, became the first Indian golfer to participate in the Masters tournament.
2007India won the inaugural cricket World T20, with M.S. Dhoni as captain.
2008Abhinav Bindra (Image: Reuters)Abhinav Bindra got India’s first individual Olympic gold medal—in the 10m rifle shooting in Beijing.
2008Vijender Singh won boxing’s first medal at the Olympics with a bronze in Beijing.
2008The Indian Premier League heralds a new era of T20 cricket, big bucks and helps BCCI become the sport’s powerhouse administrative body.
2009India win the Nehru Cup in football.
2010Sachin Tendulkar scored the first-ever double century in a one-day international, against South Africa in Gwalior.
2011India earned the right to host a Formula One Grand Prix race in Greater Noida but only briefly.
2011Host India won its second 50-over World Cup led by M.S. Dhoni.
2012Mary Kom won a bronze medal in boxing at the London Olympics, to add to her multiple world titles.
2012Wrestler Sushil Kumar added a silver medal in London to his bronze in Beijing—the only Indian with two individual Olympic medals.
2012Deepika Kumari won her first World Cup individual recurve (archery) gold medal at Antalya, Turkey.
2015Saina Nehwal, who got a bronze medal in the 2012 London Olympics, became the world No. 1 in badminton.
2016P.V. Sindhu (File Image)P.V. Sindhu won a badminton silver medal in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
2016Sakshi Malik was the first Indian female wrestler and fourth woman to win an Olympic medal—bronze in the 58kg.
2016India's first female gymnast at the Olympics, Dipa Karmarkar, finished fourth in the vault.
2017The women’s cricket team got into the ICC cricket World Cup final, losing to England.
2019P.V. Sindhu won the badminton World Championships in Basel.
2021Neeraj ChopraJavelin thrower Neeraj Chopra became the first Indian ever to win a gold medal in track and field at the Olympics.
2021C.A. Bhavani became the first fencer from the country to qualify for the Olympics at Tokyo.
2021The Indian hockey team won its first medal in 41 years—a bronze —at the Tokyo Olympics.
2022India won the men’s team competition in badminton, the 73-year-old Thomas Cup, for the first time.
2022Sunil Chhetri scored his 84th goal for India, becoming the third highest international scorer among active players and sixth in the all-time list.
2022Neeraj Chopra became only the second Indian to win a track and field medal, a silver, at the World Athletics, in Oregon, USA.
2022Four women, Rupa Rani Tirkey, Pinki, Lovely Choubey and Nayanmoni Saikia, won India’s first gold medal in lawn bowls at the Commonwealth Games.
*Listicles in this series are comprehensive, not exhaustive
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