STRAIGHT BAT
Sourav Ganguly, the man who many believe helped Indian cricket grow a spine, now heads the BCCI
SOURAV GANGULY LOVES playing the waiting game. If stories of him deliberately keeping Australian skipper Steve Waugh waiting for the toss have become folklore, his last-minute arrival as the consensus candidate for the post of BCCI president was no less intriguing. What added a twist was his meeting Union home minister and BJP president Amit Shah in Delhi before taking the flight to Mumbai. Speculation is rife that he will be the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate for the 2021 assembly election in his home state West Bengal, though both Ganguly and the BJP have dismissed it as “rumour”. (A bit of a party pooper, though, was the bitterly critical Instagram post by his daughter after the NRC controversy which, while quoting Khushwant Singh, called out the ‘fascist’ ruling dispensation at the Centre. ‘Dada’, as Ganguly is popularly called, quickly shut it down, saying the 18-year-old was “too young to understand politics”).
Meanwhile, by wearing his Team India blazer on his first working day, Ganguly sent an important message to the players—he’ll always have their back. The next big thing was to herald new beginnings via a day-and-night Test match for which home ground Eden Gardens in Kolkata was chosen. India’s demolition of Bangladesh meant that Ganguly’s first big experiment ended on a happy note.
Within weeks, he also met Rahul Dravid, now head of the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru, widely considered the nursery of Indian cricket. It’s an indication that the man who built a world-beating Indian team after the game was devastated by match-fixing charges is determined to bring a solid structure to domestic cricket. What will keep fans enthused is the balance of power between two headstrong individuals—Ganguly and current team captain Virat Kohli. Everyone expected head coach and Kohli favourite Ravi Shastri, who had a public spat with Ganguly earlier, to be the first casualty under the new regime. But things have remained smooth and businesslike till now. Dada, for now, is playing with a straight bat.
P.V. SINDHU, 24 BADMINTON PLAYER
IT TOOK JUST 37 MINUTES for Pusarla Venkata Sindhu to become the first Indian to win the Badminton World Federation World Championship at St Jakobshalle in Basel, Switzerland, on August 25. She is the third woman player to have reached the finals of the world championships three times in a row—in 2017, 2018 and 2019—a rare feat in itself. This year, she also won. Having bagged bronze in 2013 and 2014 and silver in 2017 and 2018 at the worlds, Sindhu is emerging as one of the greatest ever women’s singles players in the showpiece event’s history. She is now the joint highest medal winner in women’s singles with former Olympic champion Zhang Ning of China who won identical medals between 2001 and 2007.
Beyond her tremendous craft and athleticism—imperatives in modern badminton— what sets Sindhu apart is a sustained determination to stay at the top of her game and do better than her best. Something that lends India hope as it heads towards the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Shooter Abhinav Bindra remains the only Indian sportsperson to have won a gold medal at the Olympics in the individual category in the 24 Olympics the country has participated in.
When at the top, one’s technique, hitting and mentality all need to come together. Thus far, Sindhu had displayed extraordinary physical and mental skills to put up her best performance to outwit an opponent on a particular day. If she hones her skills further in good time, there is no reason why the 5 feet, 8 inches tall Sindhu cannot fulfil the expectation that her countrymen have of her—of bringing home a gold medal. She has already won the silver at the last Olympic, in Rio in 2016. Given her current form, she can certainly dominate the badminton court at the Summer Games in Tokyo this year, and lay undisputed claim to the epithet of India’s Golden Girl.
FOR KAILASAVADIVOO SIVAN, 62, who joined the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1982 when the country was bracing itself to join the spacefarers club, leading the Moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, as ISRO’s chairman was a rare fulfilling moment in his career. Though the hopes of landing a spacecraft on the Moon didn’t materialise after the Vikram lander failure, the evolution of the space exploration programme is no mean achievement. Still, the aerospace engineer, son of a simple farmer of Tarakkanvillai—a hamlet in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari
district—who sold a portion of his land to fund Sivan’s engineering education, could not hide his emotions when consoled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the wee hours of September 7.
Chandrayaan-2 was India’s first attempt at a moon landing. Only three countries—the United States, the erstwhile USSR and China—have managed to place a spacecraft on the Moon so far. While the Vikram lander may not have landed successfully on the Moon, the orbiter itself is functioning effectively and will continue to give out data for over seven years that will help improve our understanding of the challenges in journeying to the Moon and beyond. This is even as the premier space agency tries again to land on the Moon.
ISRO, under Sivan’s stewardship, has a busy launch schedule ahead with 13 missions—six involving launch vehicles and seven satellites— before March. It will soon be launching radar imaging satellites RISAT-2BR1 and RISAT-2BR2. “Besides these projects, ISRO will soon launch Aditya-1 through which we will be able to gather more information about the origin of the Sun and solar storms,” says Sivan.