Lasers strobed the night sky, music thundered from the speaker stacks, dancers pirouetted, military bands marched with customary precision and a super-sized balloon hovered like a benign monster as the curtain was brought down at the spectacular closing ceremony of the 19th Commonwealth Games at the Nehru Stadium here on Thursday night.
After 11 days of nerve-stretching and endurance-sapping competition, close to 4,000 athletes took the opportunity to have a last night out in Delhi, strolling into the jam-packed, waving and cheering stadium even as the volunteers, in many ways the backbone of CWG Delhi, did an impromptu run-past to the delight of the 60,000-odd spectators.
With India taking a best-ever second place in the medals table with 38 golds and 101 medals in all — another Commonwealth Games first — the mood was euphoric. And why not? Despite the best efforts of those had mismanaged these Games from Day One, Delhi took the event to heart and was eager to share in the party to mark its closing.
Saina Nehwal had set the tone in the afternoon with a never-say die battle at a different venue when she wrested India’s 38th and final gold medal on the day in the badminton women’s singles. The battler from Hyderabad sealed the overall runners-up spot after the doubles combo of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa had tied the gold tally with England at 37 apiece.
It was a massive improvement on the fourth-place finish India had managed at both Manchester in 2002 and Melbourne (2006). The icing on the cake was that CWG Delhi also saw India hit the hundred-plus mark for the first time in the medal aggregates, 101 being the final count.
There was also a downside, with the men’s hockey team pasted 8-0 by world and Commonwealth Games champions Australia in the final at the Dhyan Chand National Stadium, but that was swiftly overtaken by the euphoria generated by the women shuttlers a few hours later.
Beyond the ceremony, 11 days of hiccup-free competition, medal tallies and individual triumphs and failures lay a strong message. India may not repeat the sporting success of the Delhi Games in a hurry, but there is no doubt that they have arrived among the big players of the Commonwealth, in itself no mean feat considering that Australia, England and Canada at least are also counted among heavyweights of world sports in several disciplines.
So many inspirational stories emerged at these Games that they are bound to open doors for others. Among them were those of Deepika Kumari, daughter of a rickshaw driver from Ranchi, better known now as Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s hometown. The 16-year-old archer shot her way to two gold medals, including the individual title, a tribute to her grit and determination.
Then there was Ashish Kumar of Benaras, India’s first-ever gymnastics medallist on any international stage. Labelled a no-hoper even by officials of his own federation, the gutsy lad battled his way to a bronze and then topped it with a silver in the individual apparatus.
Like him were athlete Kavita Raut of Nashik, weightlifter Vijay Kumar of Berhampore, para-swimmer Ashish Karmakar and so many more, each of whom proved that there is a vast pool of talent waiting to be tapped.
At the same time, organisational glitches, haphazard and uncoordinated preparations, allegations of massive fund defalcation and mismanagement and a completely bizarre system of selling tickets that saw house-full signs outside empty stadia also underlined India has a long way to go before it can think of such ambitious programmes again.
More than anything else, these Games were a bitter lesson for international sports organisations and federations with everyone concerned shirking responsibility when things started to go wrong, as they did in the days before October 3.
Bearing the brunt of the chaos was the Commonwealth Games Federation and the city of Delhi, but in the end the sheer scale of India’s sporting success at CWG 2010 also showed that striving India is finally getting to grips with the task of taking on, and occasionally beating, the old inefficient, callous and uncaring India.