An ode to Abhinav Bindra - the man who gave a generation its greatest memories

November 16th 2013. The venue was the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The match was between India and West Indies. It was no ordinary match as a phenomenon was on his way out and his compatriots were doing everything they could to ensure he did so in triumphant fashion.

When Mohammad Shami took the final wicket, the end arrived in not just the test match, but also in the career of Sachin Tendulkar. An emotional speech, that contained a mention of almost everybody who helped make the journey memorable followed and then he was carried by his teammates around the venue, one that had been his home for close to a quarter of a century.

Cut to roughly 2.5 years later. The Olympics are going on at the Olympic shooting centre in Rio De Janerio. Abhinav Bindra is competing in the final event of his career in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle event.

Unlike in cricket, where players crave for large crowds at venues, shooting requires silence from the spectators and patience from the person in question.

Bindra, however, isn’t getting the former and his supporters looked like they were rapidly losing the latter. Yet he went on, battling his way through a mixture of 9’s and 10’s, hoping to win a second Olympic medal that would bring the curtains down on a stupendous career.

After firing 16 shots, he found himself tied at 163.8 with Serhiy Kulish of Ukraine. A shoot off was needed to decide who wins the medal. He pulled the trigger, the pellet whistled off his gun and cracked the target at exactly at the 10.0 mark.

He waited for Kulish to fire and when he shot a 10.5, he knew it was over. He looked up, waved at the crowd and marched away.

The journey had finished,albeit without a second Olympic medal. But he went away, just like he always has. Detached from the eventual result, knowing fully well that he had given his best.

In the coming months, after the Olympics, it would be difficult to imagine a World Cup minus Bindra in the Indian contingent.

While a lot of young, bright shooters have emerged, every shooting fan, who clicked the federation website to see the scores, also had five other words in mind, ”Bindra final main pahuncha kya?”. That is the emotion he evokes from fans.

What does he leave behind in the sport of shooting?

It would be difficult to describe Bindra’s two-decade long career in a word. It has seen so much that when he was asked in an interview, post the event, on what his biggest moment was, he let out a deep breath and eventually, albeit surprisingly, settled for the fourth place finish at Rio as the one.

It would have been mighty easy for him to pick the Olympic Gold that he won at the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the one, but he chose this perhaps because he was no longer the shooter that he was in China that day. A back problem had been troubling him for a while and in a sport like shooting, where stillness is so vital; it becomes incredibly hard with each passing day to compete with a painful back.

But, he isn’t one to complain. He never has. Even when he broke the gun, which could have gotten him a medal, he remained silent and shot valiantly with a replacement.

The one other aspect of his was that we may never see any other Indian shooter with the same extent of detachment. Win or lose, Bindra’s face remained passive as ever. It was as if he understood the meaning of the situation, but chose to just remain still and let it pass by.

He understood himself better than anyone else as was evident from his now famous reply to a journalist when asked if he would take up coaching after retirement. He replied by saying that his students would run away after two hours.

What he meant was that intensity was a key aspect of his persona and he realises it isn’t easy for the rest to be the same way like him.

He leaves a legacy that perhaps would not be matched for years to come and if anyone does come close to it, he would be the first person to stand up and applaud.

The road ahead

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that there will be a sense of satisfaction within him, as he leaves the scene, both personally and keeping the future in mind. He has achieved a lot in his career and now can look forward to the next generation to carry his legacy forward.

Jitu Rai has shown so far that he can be a man to be relied upon in the pistol category, while Apurvi Chandela is a serious talent in the Women’s 10m Air Rifle and given time, can become a star herself.

The performance of the Indian shooters at the Junior World Cup earlier will give him a lot of optimism as they returned home with a haul of 10 medals, a tally that included three golds.

For the time being, however, these things would not matter to him. It is time to head back home, relax and look back. He deserves it too, after all he’s done for the country

Farewell legend! You have done your country proud and can be very, very happy with what you have done!

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