Category Sports

Rafael Nadal was the first tennis player to win eight Grand Slam titles at the same tournament. He did it way back in 2013 and his in fact added a ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth title at the same tournament since then. No prizes for guessing where the King of Clay has achieved this feat. He has, no doubt, won these at the French Open. In fact, since 2005, he has won the tournament on 12 of the 15 occasions. Nadal has won 19 Grand Slam singles titles so far. Apart from his 12 French Open wins, he has won the Australian Open once, Wimbledon twice and the US Open four times.

Roger Federer became the second person to win eight or more titles at the same Grand Slam tournament. He did this at Wimbledon, winning the title in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 and 2017. As you can see, he had to wait for five years to get his eighth. With 20 Grand Slam titles to his name, Federer has also won six Australian Open titles, one French Open title and five US Open titles to go along with his eight titles in the grass courts of Wimbledon.

Novak Djokovic became the latest entrant to the list of people who have won eight or more titles at the same Grand Slam event. He added his 2020 Australian Open victory to titles won at the year’s opening Grand Slam in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2019. Almost half of his 17 Grand Slam singles titles won so far has thus come here. The remaining includes one French Open title, five Wimbledon titles and three US Open titles.

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In the fifth and final T20I between New Zealand and India that was played at Mount Maunganui, New Zealand on February 2, 2020, India won by 7 runs to complete a 5-0 series sweep.

The match saw Jasprit Bumrah bowl a wicket maiden, thereby becoming the bowler with the most number of maiden overs in T20 internationals history. The match also witnessed Shivam Dube concedes 34 runs in a single over, the second-most ever in T20I history.

Bowling the second over of the New Zealand innings, Jasprit Bumrah started off with a wicket maiden.

His first two balls to Martin Guptill were dot balls and Guptill was out LBW off the third ball. Tim Seifert, who came in as the one-down batsman, didn’t score a run off the remaining three deliveries in the over.

It was Bumrah’s seventh, maiden over in 50 T20 internationals, helping him break gis tie with Sri Lanka’s Nuwan Kulasekara, who has six maidens.

Bumrah gave away just 12 runs in his four overs in the match, picking up three wickets. He was declared as the player of the match for his efforts.

While Shivam Dube now has the ignominy of having conceded the second-most number of runs in a single over in T20Is, it is an Indian who hit a bowler for the maximum number of runs as well. The credit goes to Yuvraj Singh, who hit Stuart Broad for six sixes off a single over, for a total of 36! Yuvraj’s feat is even more special because he did it in a T20 World Cup game between India and England played at Durban in 2007.

Coming in to bowl the 10th over of the New Zealand innings, Shivam Dube was torn apart as the Kiwi batsmen scored four sixes and two fours in the over. A no ball in the fifth delivery of the over meant that Dube had to bowl an extra ball, rounding out a rather expensive over.

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Dinesh Karthik, Wasim Jaffer, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar were India’s top four when they achieved this rare feat for the first time. Karthik scored his first Test century and finished with 129, Jaffer retired ill at 138, captain Dravid scored 129 as well and Tendulkar was unbeaten on 122.

After a combination of rain and wet grounds had forced the first Test between India and Bangladesh in the two-match series in 2007 to a draw, these hundreds put India on their way to victory in the match and the series.

After declaring their innings at 610 for three, India bundled out Bangladesh for 118 and 253 in their two innings to win the match by an innings and 239 runs.

Pakistan’s feat is unique due to the fact that this is the first time the top four batsmen of a side have scored centuries in the second innings of the same match.

The two-Test series between Pakistan and Sri Lanka in December 2019 marked the return of Test cricket to Pakistan for the first time since 2009. Like in the Bangladesh-India series of 2007, the first Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka too ended in a draw owing to rains and wet conditions. Pakistan won the second Test and the series on the back of centuries from their top four in the second innings.

After bundling out Pakistan for 191, Sri Lanka took an 80-run first innings lead with a score of 271. But Pakistan’s top four ensured that they scored 555 for three declared in the second innings, paving the way for their 263-run victory as the Lankans were bowled out for 212.

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On December 18, 2019, in the second of three ODIs between India and West Indies that was played at Viskhapatnam, India dominated proceedings to win the game by 107 runs.

Kuldeep Yadav’s hat-trick and Rohit Sharma’s 159 were some of the highlights of the match, which saw a number of records take place.

Skippers Virat Kohli and Kieron Pollard got themselves an unwanted record. Kohli was out for a duck off his first ball, caught by Roston Chase off the bowling of Pollard. Pollard too went for a first-ball duck, caught by Rishabh Pant off the bowling of Mohammad Shami. This is the first time ever in ODI cricket when both captains have been dismissed for a golden duck (first-ball zero) in the same match.

In the 33rd over of West Indies’ innings, Kuldeep Yadav took a hat-trick, his second ODIs.

After having opener Shai Hope caught by Virat Kohli for 78 in the fourth ball of the over, he then had Jason Holder stumped off the next ball. He completed his hat-trick by dismissing Alzarri Joseph off the last ball of the over, caught by Kedar Jadhav. Kuldeep became the first Indian to take two ODI hat-tricks and in fact the first Indian to take multiple hat-tricks in international matches. He is the sixth player to have multiple ODI hat-tricks.

While Lasith Malinga has there, Wasim Akram, Saqlain Mushtaq, Chaminda Vaas and Trent Boult have two as well.

Rohit Sharma has made the highest individual score for India in ODIs in each of the last seven calendar years.

Rohit’s 159 was his seventh ODI hundred in 2019. Only four players have ever scored seven or more hundreds in the same calendar year. While Sachin Tendulkar heads the list with nine centuries in 1998, Sourav Ganguly (2000) and David Warner (2016) have also notched up seven centuries in a year.

Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant were part of the most productive over ever in India’s ODI history as they plundered 31 runs in the 47th over the innings, bowled by Roston Chase.

Iyer did the bulk of the damage as he hit 28 runs, while Pant scored a single. There were extras too in the over, to add insult to injury.

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Chess got itself an element of youth and cool in the last decade, as Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen became a grandmaster at the age of 13. In 2010, at the age of 19, he became the youngest person to be ranked number one in the FIDE world rankings. Carlsen was also the youngest to have an Elo rating of over 2,800 and holds the record for achieving the highest ever rating in history – 2,882 in 2014.

By then, Carlsen had already become the World Chess Champion, having defeated India’s Viswanathan Anand in the 2013 World Chess Championship at Chennai. He defended his title, again against Anand, in 2014 and also added the 2014 World Rapid Championship and World Blitz Championship, becoming the first to hold all three titles at the same time.

Since then, Carlsen has defended his classical world title in 2016 (against Sergy Karjakin) and 2018 (Fabiano Caruana) and has also repeated his 2014 feat of holding all three chess titles simultaneously by winning the Rapid and Blitz titles in 2019 again.

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Saurabh Chaudhary, Manu Bhaker, Jitu Rai and Apurvi Chandela are some of the name of shooters who have led India to prominence in the last decade. The youngsters have joined with the senior pros to produce consistent results across tournaments. After winning two medals in shooting at the 2012 London Olympics and having come empty handed from Rio in 2016, the current crop of shooters offer us hope ahead of Tokyo 2020.

In terms of hockey, both the men’s and women’s teams are now ranked inside the top 10, but there hasn’t been a lot to boast through the decade. The Indian’s women’s team have managed to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the first time they have managed the feat after 36 years!

There were ups and down for kabaddi in the last 10 years. The birth of the Pro Kabaddi League in 2014 brought with it unprecedented viewership to the game, as it became a staple of the Indian TV viewers. The game’s growing popularity also meant that other countries picked up the sport well, as was evident in the 2018 Asian Games. Iran defeated India in the semi-final and went on to win the title, ending seven-time Asian Games champions India’s stranglehold of the event.

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