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The next year will be big for almost all major sports India plays — cricket, hockey, badminton — with round-the-year action pinning fans down in front of TVs or stuck to mobile phones livestreaming the events. While 2017 saw Indian sport consolidate itself —  Virat Kohli  shone as cricket captain and badminton emerged as the Olympic sport with lots of excitement around it — 2018 should be a good indicator of where the country really stands as a sporting nation. The next year will be big for almost all major sports India plays — cricket, hockey, badminton — with round-the-year action pinning fans down in front of TVs or stuck to mobile phones livestreaming the events. The headline sporting event of the year, though, will be the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, a tournament that will be missing Italy, Chile and Holland in the list of the qualified 32. While Indians can sit back and revel in the neutral’s corner during the World Cup, they will,...

If  Saina Nehwal 's hat-trick of titles in 2010 was the catalyst which propelled Indian badminton to a different plane, 2017 has proved to be a watershed year for the sport as  Kidambi Srikanth  led the boys' victory parade with four Super Series titles in a calendar year. Since 2010, the sport has witnessed a spiraling success rate every year. The Olympic medal came in 2012 with Saina's bronze and a podium finish at the World Championships became a regular feature thereafter. Sindhu's Olympic silver at the 2016 Olympic Games catapulted the game to new heights of popularity. However, 2017 has seen greater performances from the Indian shuttlers as 13 major titles have been won by seven different players, apart from  PV Sindhu 's silver and Saina's bronze at the World Championships. Sindhu's one hour 50-minute marathon against  Nozomi Okuhara  of Japan in the Worlds final will go down in history as an epic encounter. Never in the past had so many I...

Bittersweet is perhaps the best phrase to sum up India’s sporting record in 2017. The Indian team under Virat Kohli played brilliantly in the Champions Trophy in England in June to make the final, but eventually ended up second best to Pakistan. Uday Deb The women repeated the performance a month later. Beating Australia in a pulsating semi-final, they were in a position to close out the final but eventually fell short by an agonising margin of 9 runs, to finish runner up behind England before a packed house at Lord’s. PV Sindhu, who had another good year following her breakthrough performance in Rio in 2016, twice ended up second best in two closely contested finals. In fact, the world championship final between Sindhu and the Japanese Nozomi Okuhara in Glasgow will rank as one of the best badminton matches ever played. Among men, India now has four players in the top 20 in badminton with Kidambi Srikanth being the stand out performer winning a record four super series ti...