BRAND-NEW DELHI: PV Sindhu, Rohit Sharma, Rani, Saurabh Chaudhary, Dutee Chand, Manu Bhaker, Bajrang Punia and Jaspal Rana are some of the popular names that included among the winners at the Times of India Sports Awards ( TOISA) powered by BHIM-UPI, which honoured the best performances in Indian sport in 2019 at a glittering awards function in Delhi on Thursday.
The who’s who of India’s sports fraternity existed at the awards ceremony, including one of the nation’s most famous sports individuals, hockey Olympian Balbir Singh Sr, who was part of 3 of India’s gold-medal winning groups at the Olympics, besides being the manager of the team that lifted the 1975 World Cup.
The occasion was also gone to by a couple of really special visitors – members of the 1980 Olympics gold medal winning hockey group, consisting of captain V Basakaran, MM Somaiya, Mervyn Fernandes, Zafar Iqbal, Surinder Singh Sodhi and MK Kaushik.
Sindhu’s historic feat of ending up being the very first Indian to win the badminton World Championships remained unmatched and she was, therefore, named the ‘Sportsperson of the Year’, besides being the joint winner in the Jury’s Option Award for ‘Badminton Gamer of the Year’ in addition to Sai Praneeth. Sindhu, who is presently ranked 6th in the BWF Rankings, completed a hat-trick by winning the ‘Solid Spirit of Sport award’ also. She is set to enter the Tokyo Olympics in an endeavour to enhance on the females’s singles silver medal she won in Rio 4 years earlier.
The males’s award in the badminton classification went to 2019 BWF World Championships bronze medallist Sai Praneeth, who created history by becoming just the 2nd male after Prakash Padukone to win a medal at the premier competition.
The elite panel of jury members that chose the ‘Jury’s Choice Award’ in 19 classifications included previous India cricketer Gautam Gambhir; previous India football captain Bhaichung Bhutia; hockey’s Olympic gold medallist Zafar Iqbal; Asian Games silver medallist and former athlete Ashiwni Nachappa; the very first Indian paralympian to win 2 gold medals at the Paralympics, Devendra Jhajaria; and Chief Editor of Times Internet Limited, Rajesh Kalra.
The ‘Cricketer of the Year’ award went to Rohit, who set the 2919 ICC World Cup ablaze with a record