One AI is artificial intelligence; second AI is aspirational India.
Hon. PM Narendra Modi Ji
Trophies galore in Indian sports. Women’s under-19 T20 World Championship was held in Malaysia from January 18 to Fabruary 2, 2025. The Indian team, led by captain Niki Prasad, defended their title against South Africa, winning the match convincingly by 9 wickets.
India won all their matches in qualifying rounds and were up against South Africa, also unbeaten. South Africa won the toss and chose to bat. They quickly lost the openers, Botha and Lourens, and were 20/2. Mieke van Voorst tried to steady the innings and was the highest scorer with 23. Thanks to brilliant bowling by G Trisha (3-15), Parunika Sisodia (2-6), Ayushi Shukla (2-9) and Vaishnavi Sharma (2-23), South Africa were bowled out for 82.
We are definitely going to create this legacy of winning ICC trophies, winning a lot of trophies for India.
Niki Prasad, Captain, women U-19 team
The chase was a breeze. Although India lost G Kamalini early, G Trisha and Sanika Chalke finished the match in just 11.2 overs, completely dominating the match and the tournament.
Player of the match and player of the series was G Trisha, who scored 309 runs, took seven wickets and is the first player to score a century in U19 T20 World Cup. Trisha hails from the state of Telangana. Her father encouraged her to play cricket regularly and left his job to train his daughter. Trisha was also part of the team that won the 2023 World Cup. Aayushi took 14 wickets in the tournament while Vaishnavi took 17 wickets, including a fiver against Malaysia and a hat-trick.
Many congratulations to the U-19 Indian team, coach Dhruv Gupta and the support staff for winning the T20 World Cup back-to-back.
GM Pragg wins the Tata Steel Masters 2025
This is a very special event in the chess world and I have seen games from this tournament growing up.
GM R Pragganandhaa, Tata Steel Masters 2025 Champion
Just last month I wrote about a future scenario where both World Chess Champion and the challenger are from India. Little did I know that Indian chess fans will get a taste of it so soon.
The annual Tata Steel Chess Tournament was held in Wijk aan Zee from 17 January to 2 February this year. This is a very prestigious tournament whose former winners list reads like a Who’s Who of chess, including GM Paul Keres, GM Mikhail Tal, and GM Garry Kasparov. The only Indian chess player to win it before GM Pragg was GM Vishy Anand who won it five times.
Out of fourteen players, four were from India – current World Champion GM D. Gukesh, GM Pragg, GM P. Harikrishna, and GM Arjun Erigaisi. Both GM Gukesh and GM Pragg emerged as top contenders with 8.5 points each. Even the tiebreak that was a two-game Blitz match was 1-1. Finally, in sudden death, GM Pragg won by 2-1.
Both GM Gukesh and GM Pragg hail from the state of Tamil Nadu. Chess culture in the state of Tamil Nadu is at a whole different level, where talented players get support both from the government and private sponsorships. India has a total of 85 grandmasters out of which 30 are from Tamil Nadu. GM Pragg’s sister GM R. Vaishali is a top level professional chess player. They were the first siblings to participate in the Candidates 2024 tournament. And of course, it is no coincidence that five time world champion GM Vishy Anand is also from the state of Tamil Nadu.
Many congratulations to GM Pragg for becoming the second Indian to with the Tata Steel Masters Tournament 2025.
Men in blue win the T20 series against England
It’s always about being a little instinctive on the ground.
Suryakumar Yadav, Captain, T20 Indian Cricket Team
India and England finished five match T20 series that India convincingly won 4-1. There were so many great performances. A watchful 72 (55) by Tilak Varma in the second T20, a timely knock of 40 (35) by Hardik Pandya in the third T20, a fifer by Varun Chakravarthy in the same match. Varun also was the player of the series with 14 wickets. It was great to see Mohammed Shami back in team, taking 3 wickets.
And as every cricket fan will agree, the best innings in the whole series was a brilliant 135 (54) by Abhishek Sharma in the fifth T20. Words fail to adequately describe his performance. He played this knock against world class bowlers of the likes of Jofra Archer and Mark Wood who were routinely bowling around the speed of 150 km/h and Abhishek was smashing them all over the place like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Even a great spinner like Adil Rashid was powerless.
Abhishek scored the second fastest century in T20, hitting 13 sixes, most by an Indian batter in T20. Fastest century was by Rohit Bhai against Sri Lanka in 2017 in just 35 balls. Abhishek is a mentee of Yuvi Paji and is going from strength to strength in every match.
There is a great article in ESPNcricinfo by Sidharth Monga where he anlyses India’s performance based on statistical parameters such as strike rate and attack percent and concludes that this may be the greatest T20 team ever. And imagine, the greatest fast bowler in the world Jasprit Bumrah is not in the team due to injury. What would the scores look like if he were in the team?
For some reason, the English team could not perform to its full potential. It is a herculean task to beat India on home ground, no doubt. There were moments when they were in control like in the 3rd T20 that they won by 26 runs but they needed more of those. Captain Jos Buttler was the most consistent performer with the bat, with the highest score of 68 (44). Phil Salt, Harry Brook, and Liam Livingstone all played one good innings but could not sustain the tempo. It was great to see the English team sportingly congratulating Abhishek after his brilliant knock.
I have to mention the British spectators here who followed their team from venue to venue and showed great support and sportsmanship. I can never forget an incident in the last T20 match when Jamie Overton got out. A British lady threw both hands on her head saying ‘Oh no’ and the very next moment, started clapping for captain Sky, who took a brilliant catch running backwards and diving. Indeed, a picture is worth a thousand words!
Hearty congratulations to Indian T20 team, coach Gautam Gambhir and the support staff for a fabulous performance.
In the last year, I have written about India winning T20 World Cup, India’s Olympic and Paralympic performances, India winning double gold at the Chess Olympiad, GM D Gukesh winning World Chess Championship, Indian Women Cricket team winning and so on. And I am sure I have not covered all events.
We all know that AI means artificial intelligence but PM Narendra Modi Ji has another definition for AI – Aspirational India. And we continue to see examples of this everyday, including those described above.
Quote by Hon. PM Modi Ji is from his speech in the Parliament of India. Quote by Niki Prasad is taken from the ESPNcricinfo article. Quote by GM Pragg is from the ChessBase India interview. Quote by Suryakumar Yadav is from his BBCI inteview telecast on Disney+Hotstar.
Lead image credit : Wiki
