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    India has produced a number of world class shuttlers. George Lewis, Davinder Mohan, Vijay Madgackar, Raja Patwardhan, Dattu Mugwe, Prakash Nath and Alok Nath were top notchers before Independence while T.n. Seth, Amritlal Dewan, nandu Natekar, Suresh Goel, Dinesh Khanna, Ghosh brothers-Dipu and Romen-Satish Bhatia and Syed Modi were brilliant players of the post-Independence era. But the player who took Indian badminton champion, Prakash Padukone won a number of prominent international tournaments thwarting the formidable challenge of Chinese, Indionesian and Danish giants. The Indian magician won the prestigious All-England badminton championship in 1980 beating Liem Swie King of Indonesia and before that Masters tournament in September 1979 in London’s famous Royal Albert Hall. In addition, Prakash had won a gold in the Edmonton Commonwealth Games in 1978.

    Among women, Tara Deodhar, Mumtaj Lotwalla (nee Chinoy), Sunder Deodhar, Freny Taleyarkhan, Suman Athavale, Prem Parashar, Sarojini Apte, Ami Ghia, Meena Shah, Kanwal Thakur Singh and Madhumita Bisht (nee Goswami) were top players who performed creditably.

    The fifties were the golden years for the Indian badmintion, when India fared satisfactorily in the Thoman Cup and Uber Cup, the symbols of supremacy in the men’s and women’s team competitions respectively. But it has fallen on lean times with only P. Gopi Chan among men and Aparna Poput among women being of international class today.

    Though being played in the country since 1920s, table tennis gained momentum only after Independence. India produced a number of fine players like Uttam Chandrana, V. Sivaraman, Kalyan, Jayant, Krishna Nagaraj, Suidheer Thakersey, Gautam Diwan, Farokh Khodaiji, Niraj Bajaj, Manjit Dua, Jayant Vora, Mir Kasim Ali, Venuy Chandrasekhar and Kamlesh Mehta. Among women Gool Nasikwala, Sayeeda Sultana, Meena Parande, Usha Sundarraj, kaity Khodaji (nee Chargeman_, Indu Puri, Shailaja Salokhe, Rupa Mukherjee and Niyati Shah were India’s top performers.

    Like badminton, the fifties were the golden years for the Indian table tennis. This was the decade during which Gool Nasikwala won the triple crown in the inaugural Asian tabale tennis championship in Singapore in 1952. Krishna Nagraj reached the quarterfinals in the world championships in Tokyo in 1956, Sudheer Thakersey was declared the best player in Asia in 1957 and the Indian men’s team secured tenth place in thw Swaythingling Cup in the world championships in Dortmund (Germany) in 1959, which is India’s best ever ranking in the world table tennis. Though India has hosted the world table tennis championships three times in 1952, 1975 and 1987 iun Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi respectively, nothing else of note could be achieved by the Indian paddlers. In April 1997, however, India’s doubles pair of Chetan Baoor and S. Raman won a gold in the Commonwealth table tennis meet at Glasgow. Never before in the 26-year history of the Commonwealth table tennis had India won a title.

    The fifties and the early sixties were the golden years of the Indian soccer, when India won the soccer gold twice in the Asian Games and was placed fourth in the soccer competition at Melbourne Olympiad in 1956. Otherwise, there is hardly anything else to be cheerful about the Indian football which has not been able to extricate itself from the quagmire of mediocarity.