It won’t be illegitimate to call year 2017 as one of the most eventful and happening year in recent past in terms of sports. There were innumerable sagas of victories and defeats, somewhere it led to major transitions and somewhere veterans just got better with age. One fact that stole my attention and may be of others was the shift in paradigm of Indian sports from cricket to other important ones which were not given their due in recent past in terms of resources and governance and Indian sportspersons like P.V. Sindhu and K.Srikanth have proved their mettle rightfully in this context by overthrowing age old Chinese dominance in Badminton. This is pretty evident of the fact that a little shift in focus can lead to stupendous results and can give a chance to sports enthusiasts to celebrate not just upon captain knocks and tons of Virat Kohli but on smashes and goals of Sindhu and Chettri as well.
Moving ahead, this year started well off with swiss giant Roger Federer for whom age is just a number and came up with adding another feather in his cap by winning Australian Open title. This story doesn’t end here as he also won Wimbledon which was his 19th grandslam title. Absolutely it was a great year for Federer and so was for Rafael Nadal as he ended this year with rank 1 and two grandslam titles. Honestly speaking, it won millions of hearts when they played the together in a double’s match of Laver cup, which was according to me the best of tennis in 2017.
This year Badminton witnessed some exciting and nail-biting encounters in which both Indian shuttlers P.V. Sindhu and K.Srikanth gave us moments that are worth cherishing forever. On one hand Srikanth clinched 4 super series titles and on the other Sindhu won silver medals in world championship and BWF super series finals.
Moving on in football, what caught attention of thousands of soccer fans was the high profile transfer of Brazilian footballer Neymar Jr. from Barcelona to Paris Saint German, which have costed the later a whopping 222 million euros. Later in the year, India witnessed the biggest football carnival by successfully hosting under-17 football world cup. Lastly Cristiano Ronaldo defended his Ballon d’or title as he came up as the best footballer of the year.
Coming towards Hockey, the best in this year was India who outclassed Germany in world league finals and managed to grab both the third position and attention of media.
Well yes, the resistance of not writing about cricket wasn’t strong enough and here we come to discuss it’s best where India’s win over Australia and Harmanpreet kaur’s scintillating hundred in women’s cricket world cup semifinal became talk of the town, the other events in this regard were Kuldeep Yadav’s hatrick against Australia, Virat Kohli surpassing the record of 30 ODI centuries of Ricky Ponting, a historic win of Bangladesh over Australia in a test match.
Lastly what deserve some special mentions are ongoing winning streak of boxer Vijendra Singh in his pro-boxing career and Lewis Hamilton’s record breaking world championship victory in Formula One.
