Asian Games 2023: 7 sportspeople who have made India proud

Boxer Nikhat Zareen dominated her first bout - even though she was going up against world championship finalist Nguyen Thi Tam. (Photo via X / Nikhat Zareen)

It’s only three days in, and the Asian Games action is heating up for India, with medals coming from both expected and unlikely events—the women’s cricket gold was a foregone conclusion, but how about an equestrian dressage gold? That’s what the Indian mixed team—Hriday Chheda, Divyakriti Singh, Anush Agarwalla and Sudipti Hajela—pulled off on Tuesday, a first in 41 years (all three Asian Games gold in equestrian for India before this one came at the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi).

Some big names faltered—the fencer Bhavani Devi could not make it past the quarterfinals in Sabre on Tuesday—while others, like Nikhat Zareen, have shown that they are the ones to beat with a dominating opening performance in boxing. Here are some of the finest performers from the Asian Games so far.

1. Titus Sadhu, fast bowler, Indian women’s cricket team

A month back, Titas (pronounced Tee-taash, the Ts soft) Sadhu had no idea she would be heading to the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, as part of the Indian women’s cricket team. A text from a friend alerted her that she had been named in the squad. Surprised, the 18-year-old remembers running down the stairs from her room on the terrace to tell her parents the news.

On September 24, she was handed her senior cap by Smriti Mandhana in the semifinal against Bangladesh, where she immediately bowled with pace and purpose, picking up a wicket and holding her end as her strike partner Puja Vastrakar decimated Bangladesh with a four-wicket haul.

On September 25, it was Sadhu’s star turn, as she broke Sri Lanka’s back in her opening two overs—a full delivery luring opener Anushka Sanjeewani to a lofted drive grabbed easily by Harmanpreet Kaur, a back-of-the-length delivery sharply angling in to take the stumps of Vishmi Gunaratne two balls later; when she bagged a third wicket in her next over, Sadhu’s bowling figures read 2 overs, 1 maiden, 1 run, 3 wickets. It set the platform for India to comfortably defend 116 to win the first-ever Asian Games cricket gold.

It should come as no surprise that Sadhu is mentored by Jhulan Goswami, India’s and one of the world’s most successful pace bowlers. Sadhu comes from a sporting family from the city of Chuchura, 40km north of Kolkata on the banks of the Ganga. From her grandfather, she learnt football. From her father, who owns a stadium and a sports academy, she got her love for track & field and swimming. It was only by accident, when her father one day told her to bowl at the goalpost with a tennis ball after a football session, that her talent for fast bowling was discovered. During the Covid lockdown, Sadhu focused on her cricket, notching up hours of practice at the family academy. She was only 16 when she broke into the Bengal team in 2021, and this year, at the inaugural ICC Women’s U19 World Cup, she was the star for a victorious India. Her tight line and length, ability to hit the deck hard, and movement off the seam bringing her three wickets in the final against England and the player of the final award.

2. Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, 10m Air Rifle

The 22-year-old rifle shooter from Madhya Pradesh made his first big breakthrough at the biggest stage by winning the 10m Air Rifle Team gold with fellow young shooters Ruddranksh Patil and Divyansh Panwar—India’s opening gold at the 2023 Asian Games—before grabbing the individual 10m Air Rifle bronze just a couple of hours later.

Though the Team category in 10m Air Rifle is not an Olympic discipline, it is an indicator of the health of Indian shooting that the three young shooters beat China, a shooting powerhouse, in their own backyard while setting the world record score for the event.

Tomar was a part of the Tokyo Olympics shooting contingent that returned without a single medal after promising the world—Tomar was ranked No.2 in the world in 50m Rifle 3 Positions heading into Tokyo, having won the Junior World Championship title that year with a record score, but failed to make the finals in Tokyo.

If the Tokyo performance was a low point for Indian shooting, the Asian Games is a chance to show how far they have come from there.

Tomar shifted to the famed MP Shooting Academy in Bhopal to work under coach Shuma Shirur, who is now the high-performance director for the national rifle shooters, when he was just 15.

He was already adept at handling guns. His father, a landowning farmer from Ratanpur village in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone district, kept a variety of firearms in the house, a Rajput tradition, and taught the young Tomar how to shoot. Still, it was a hard decision for the family to allow Tomar to focus on becoming a shooter at the expense of academic excellence.

Now the young shooter’s focus shifts to his favourite event, the 50m 3 positions, and he now looks almost certain to win medals in this event too.

3. Neha Thakur, sailing

Neha Thakur is just 17 years old, but the girl from Madhya Pradesh took to sailing when she was 10, training at the National Sailing School in Bhopal.

India wins medals in sailing events at the Asian level, but is not one of the dominant forces, so a teenager bagging a silver in her maiden Asian Games is excellent news. Thakur won her silver medal in the Girl's Dinghy—ILCA4 at the NBX Sailing Centre in Ningbo, finishing second behind Noppassorn Khunboonjan of Thailand after 11 races.

Add Thakur to the list of young Indian sailors breaking new ground. The Tokyo Olympics was the first Games were Indian sailors qualified on merit (instead of exposure quotas handed out to some developing countries), with four sailors competing in three categories. One of them, Nethra Kumanan, became the first Indian female sailor to compete at the Olympics (Kumanan finished fourth in her dinghy event at the Asian Games).

With this result, India can expect to build on the Tokyo Olympics breakthroughs, and hope for more at Paris 2024.

4-7. Boxers have a ball

The Indian boxing contingent is on a roll at Hangzhou, China.

First, reigning two-time world champion Nikhat Zareen faced her world championship final opponent, Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Tam, in a peculiar first-round draw. If that was supposed to faze the Indian boxer, it didn’t work—Zareen’s red-hot form ensured that unlike the more evenly matched world championship final earlier this year in New Delhi, the first round of the Asian Games was a one-sided contest. By the end of the fight, Nguyen had been at the receiving end of some powerful jabs, straight rights, hooks, and body shots, with not much reply. Zareen hardly broke sweat. There is only one thing that can stop her—biased scoring, unfortunately still a major part of amateur boxing, which results in host countries always bagging an outsized number of medals.

Deepak Bhoria, the man who replaced 2018 Asian Games gold medallist Amit Panghal in the Indian squad, showcased his superb speed and power in another dominating performance to move into the pre-quarterfinals, as did Nishant Dev in 71kg.

Sachin Siwach pulled off another great win in the ring, making it past Indonesia’s Asri Udin with complete ease and a 5-0 scoreline to enter the round of 16 in 57kg.