NEW DELHI: Indian sports is in a daze, as Indian shooting fires away.

We have two world champions in Abhinav Bindra and Manavjit Singh Sandhu, crowned in a space of four days, when Indian shooting could not boast of even one in the last 58 years of its independent existence.

From the days of Maharaja Karni Singh winning the trap silver in the World championship at Cairo in 1962, Indian shooting has indeed come a long way.

Till the shotgun World championship at Nicosia, Cyprus, in 2003, Indian shooting had only four medals to show, including two at the junior level — a gold from Jaspal Rana in 1994 and a bronze by Rajkumari Dhodiya in 2002.

Of course, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who won the bronze in the World championship, has gone on to become an Olympic silver medallist. He has perhaps further ignited the spirit of excellence among the fraternity.

Splendid show

It has been a splendid fare so far at Zagreb, Croatia, thanks to the combined efforts of a bunch of talented and dedicated marksmen.

"We are getting there and am sure we have a lot to look up to, especially in the forthcoming World championship and the Asian Games,'' National coach Prof. Thomas had said while summing up the performance of the Indian shooters at the Commonwealth Games and the subsequent World Cup in China.

Part of the Dronacharya awardee's observation has been proved true in an overwhelming fashion. Having been associated with Indian shooting as the chief coach for about a decade and a half, Prof. Thomas has played a splendid part in ensuring that every problem has been solved in the best possible manner.

It does pay to have a national coach on a long-term basis, even as you have professional coaches from abroad, like Tibor Gonczol, Laszlo Szucsak, Gyorik Csaba and Russell Mark, tuning the shooters to world-class standards over the years.

Ready for the big stage

The signs were clear when Sonia Rai won the first ever pistol medal from a World Cup recently. Tejaswini Sawant and Avneet Kaur Sidhu showed that they were ready to get on to the big stage with quality efforts in Melbourne. Avneet has gone on to win an Olympic quota for Bejing.

The Union Government has been pretty kind to the shooters in meeting the huge expenses in terms of equipment, ammunition and international exposure around the world.Every rupee spent has been worth it.

Teething problems

There are teething problems like lack of quality ammunition, sufficient electronic targets and properly working ranges for quality preparation, but the shooters have marched on, taking everything in their stride, sticking to their regimen and staying focused on their goals.

Two world champions despite the tremendous Chinese domination, and the World championship is not over as yet. Rathore is set to shoot double trap on July 31 and Jaspal Rana can still win that elusive world level medal in his pet event centre-fire pistol. It was Jaspal who showed the way by winning the only individual gold medal for the country in the Asian Games at Hiroshima in 1994 when he was only 18.

It will be unfair to say that Indian shooters have come of age, as they have been performing at every stage, winning medals by the bagful. There is no doubt the best is yet to come.

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