Sports 2022: Women stars Nikhat, Sindhu, Mirabai among India’s top-5 performers

The year 2022 was another memorable year for Indian sport, one that witnessed many historic performances on the world stage after the highs of the Tokyo Olympics. From the men’s badminton team lifting its maiden Thomas Cup trophy after shuttling out 14-time champions Indonesia in the final in Bangkok to a young, pugnacious and uber-confident Nikhat Zareen making the podium all her own in the women’s World Boxing Championships in Istanbul and Olympic javelin champion Neeraj Chopra providing a silver lining at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, India witnessed some of her best sporting moments in a perfect follow-up to 2021. And, not to forget, an equally stunning show from para-shooter Avani Lekhara who overcame the horror of suffering a near fatal car accident at the age of 11 which left her paralyzed below the waist to become the first-ever Indian woman to win gold at the Tokyo Paralympics.In Birmingham, India excelled in sports which weren’t part of the earlier CWG editions and, that too, with shooting removed from the Games’ programme. India’s 61 medals in Birmingham might well seem short of the 101 won at the Delhi CWG in 2010 and their 22 gold medals below the 26 won at the Gold Coast four years ago. But account for disciplines that were missing such as shooting, archery, greco-roman wrestling and tennis, and it was actually the country’s best CWG performance because the events that gave 49 medals in 2010 weren’t there at the 2022 Games. There were several inspiring, even gutsy, performances from the Indian athletes – the quartet of Lovely Choubey, Pinki, Nayanmoni Saikia and Rupa Rani Tirkey etching their names in history books with a maiden gold in the women’s four lawn bowls event; table tennis legend Achanta Sharath Kamal putting on his best CWG show at the age of 40 to grab three gold and one silver in a single CWG edition; Indian women’s cricket team led by Harmanpreet Kaur securing the country’s first-ever CWG medal in cricket – a silver; Eldhose Paul bagging India’s first-ever triple jump CWG gold, Murali Sreeshankar getting the country's first silver medal in the men’s long jump, Tejaswin Shankar becoming the first Indian to win a high jump medal -- a bronze -- and steeplechaser Avinash Sable ending the hegemony of Kenyan runners spanning across six Games and 24 years to secure silver in the men’s 3000 steeplechase. Times of India’s Sabi Hussain and Biju Babu Cyriac take a look at some of the magical individual achievements of our athletes in 2022 to select the top-5 Indian Sportspersons of the Year, three of whom were women.Audio production: Prateek Kapoor