But, in the recent past there have been some players who have taken India to maximum glory. Players from India have started performing at the international level. Cricket is a sport in which India has a very good team and is the world champions as well, but the problem is that the sport is played in only 10-12 countries and the rest of the countries don’t even know about it.
The good change that is happening in this cricket loving nation is that people have started to relate with other sports, now people know how difficult and important it is to bring an Olympic medal and to win a world championship is.
Let’s have a look at some of the best sportsperson that India has produced in the past two decades.
Vishwanathan Anand: Chess
The first grandmaster of India has literally introduced the nation to the game of chess. Anand won the World Chess Championship for five times in the year 2000, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2012. He is also the undisputed chess champion from the past five years and is also one among the few players to stay in top 3 from the last 20 years.
Abhinav Bindra: Shooting
People die to win an Olympic medal and this shooter provided India maximum glory when he won the gold in Beijing Olympics in 2008. He by winning the medal became the first Indian to win an individual gold medal at the Olympic Games. It was the first gold medal for India after the gap of 28 years. He is also the current world champion in Air Rifle shooting. He is also the youngest recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Awards. He has achieved tremendous heights in shooting and will once again be the prime contender to bring a medal for India in the upcoming London Olympics.
Leander Paes: Tennis
Indian tennis is synonymous to Leander Paes. He is a synergy of mental and physical strength and is still going strong at 39. Leander Paes has been playing professional tennis from the past 21 years and has won 49 doubles career titles. He has won 13 Grand Slam titles (including both doubles and mixed doubles) and who can forget the bronze medal that he won for India in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Leander started his Davis Cup career when he was 16 years old in the year 1990, has never looked back. He has an overall record of 86–31 and has played a pivotal role in India’s Davis Cup campaign from the past so many years.
Sushil Kumar: Wrestling
Sushil Kumar made the entire nation proud with his efforts in the Beijing Olympics. He won the bronze medal in the Men's 66kg Freestyle Wrestling event by defeating Leonid Spiridonov from Kazakhstan. There have been instance where a player has faded after the Olympic glory but that is not the case with Sushil. In 2010, Sushil Kumar became the first Indian wrestler to win a world championship title. He also won a gold medal in Commonwealth Games in the same year. He achieved a rare feat by winning his match in a record 9 seconds in the semifinal match in the Commonwealth Games. Sushil has once again qualified for the Olympics and the whole nation is expecting big things from this hard working individual.
Saina Nehwal: Badmintion
Saina Nehwal was born on March 17, 1990 in Hyderabad city of India. Saina started her badminton training under the apt guidance of S M Arif, who was a Dronacharya Awardee. The Gopi Chand Academy of Hyderabad is the very place where Saina Nehwal is presently training. The Gopi Chand Academy at present is making plans to train Saina Nehwal in a more improved way by sending her to Holland and Denmark.
Sachin Tendulkar: Cricket
He is considered to be the best batsmen ever to pick up a bat in the world. Sachin has virtually all the batting records. He recently became the first batsman to score 100 international century. He also has scored the maximum numbers of runs in both one-dayers and Test matches. He has scored centuries in every part of the world and against every opponent.
Rahul Dravid: Cricket
Rahul Dravid was probably one of the last classical Test match batsmen. His progress into the national side may have been steady and methodical rather than meteoric, but once there, Dravid established himself at the vanguard of a new, defiant generation that were no longer easybeats away from home. Armed with an orthodox technique drilled into him by Keki Tarapore, he became the cement that held the foundations firm while the flair players expressed themselves. Yet, for a man quickly stereotyped as one-paced and one-dimensional, he too could stroke the ball around when the mood struck him.
Saurav Ganguly: Cricket
Some felt he couldn't play the bouncer, others swore that he was God on the off-side; some laughed at his lack of athleticism, others took immense pride in his ability to galvanise a side. Sourav Ganguly's ability to polarise opinion led to one of the most fascinating dramas in Indian cricket. Yet, nobody can dispute that he was India's most successful Test captain - forging a winning unit from a bunch of talented, but directionless, individuals - and nobody can argue about him being one of the greatest one-day batsmen of all time. Despite being a batsman who combined grace with surgical precision in his strokeplay, his career had spluttered to a standstill before being resurrected by a scintillating hundred on debut at Lord's in 1996. Later that year, he was promoted to the top of the order in ODIs and, along with Sachin Tendulkar, formed one of the most destructive opening pairs in history.
Pankaj Advani: Billiards
At the age of 10 his acumen for snooker came to the notice of Arvind Savur at the Karnataka State Billiards Association Hall. He won his first ever title at the age of 12 and went on to set several records at the state and national levels. In the year 2000 he won his first Indian Junior Billiards Championship title and then went on to win it again in 2001 and 2003. In 2003 he won the India Junior Snooker Championship which made him the youngest National Snooker champion.
