The year might be coming to an end, but the sporting carnival never ends. More so in this economy, which has been built on the brazen principle of squeezing out every drop of cash from whatever avenues you have access to. There’s always the next game, the next season, the next storyline waiting to be written, the next hero to be coronated, the next villain to be kicked off the pedestals. Of course, the brunt of an unrelenting, strangulating schedule is felt as much by the faceless fans as the viewers. There’s not much time to process what transpires in the game, and before everything dissolves into nothing, let’s take a moment to reminisce the year that 2023 was, in a sporting context.

Wild Wild Chess

Chess is pretty bland for my liking, and the only time I found myself surprisingly intrigued about this brainy world of the competitive sport was for a brief duration when Hans Niemann was accused of using a vibrating toy into his derriere, to beat Magnus Carlsen. This theory gained prominence on Reddit, and gathered steam after Carlsen refused to play Niemann on the next occasion. Niemann responded by filing a $100 million lawsuit against Carlsen. 

Anti-Sisyphus Of The Year

By the time Glenn Maxwell sauntered onto the crease against Afghanistan in the ODI World Cup, the match had already moved into hopeless territory for Australia. From a point where all efforts were bound to go in vain, a sporting representation of Sisyphus rolling up the boulder over the hill. Maxwell, however, did what Sisyphus couldn’t. He scored a double-century in a chase of mere 292 runs, when Australia had lost seven wickets for just 91 runs.

Patch-Up Of The Year

Virat Kohli’s fight on the field is not his alone; it also brings in the gazillions of followers he has accumulated over the years, as it did after his fracas against Naveen-ul-Haq in this year’s IPL. It must not have been easy for Naveen-ul-Haq, who was constantly greeted with a sarcastic chant of ‘Kohli Kohli’ almost every time he stepped onto the field in this country. Once the match between India and Afghanistan in the World Cup was over, Kohli hugged Naveen-ul-Haq and asked him to bury the hatchets.

Love At First Sight

 

Jude Bellingham is enjoying his life at Real Madrid, scoring goals for fun to keep Real Madrid at the top of the points table. In return, Santiago Bernabeu has sold its soul to the young Englishman. There’s a sense of purity in the love that’s been showered upon him, by his teammates, by his coaches, by fans of Madrid, and by the Spanish press. Whether it’s limerence or the beginning of full-fledged romance is hard to predict, but whatever the form of this union and however it goes from here, it’s beautiful, it’s worth living in the moment rather than brooding over the future. 

Words Do Bite Back

The English captain Jos Buttler smartly quipped that his team was not there to defend the ODI World Cup title. “We’re not defending anything. I want us to attack so I don’t like the word defending,” he said. Everyone laughed at the naivety of the statement, but little did they know Buttler meant it in all seriousness. England never came up with a plan to defend. Everything that could have gone wrong for them did go wrong. They won three and lost six, much to the surprise of everyone.

Homecoming Of The Year

Exactly a year after he was unceremoniously deported from Australia, Novak Djokovic decided to swallow up his pride and return to Down Under. This time his arrival was hassle-free, and so was his journey to the record-extending 10th Australian Open title. Okay, it was not redemption by any stretch — if a sporting triumph was a sure-shot way to atonement for the sins, then tennis would have triumphed religion already. But Djokovic’s triumph in Melbourne was the homecoming of the year, not because of the whole airport saga, but for what he had done before that – by winning it on nine occasions.

Say Perhaps To Doping? 

It was the year when the subject of doping resurfaced, claiming the career of the two elite sportspersons: Paul Pogba and Simona Halep. Pogba was found guilty of taking testosterone, while Halep was handed a four-year ban after testing positive for roxadustat. She’ll be fighting for her innocence in the Court of Arbitration For Sports (CAS), but the process is painstakingly slow, and the purgatorial tennis limbo awaits her. Similarly, it’s safe to predict the end of the career of Pogba.

End Of An Era

Stuart Broad hung up his boots, and we might never see another fast bowler reaching 600 wickets in Test cricket. Broad is the endpoint of this specific breed of fast bowling, a pure red-ball specimen who has prolonged his Test career by meticulously stripping his craft to bare essentials. What made watching Broad so captivating was not just his extraordinary skills, but also the chutzpah he brought to the game, and the unapologetic indifference he carried towards embarrassments.

There will never be another Broad.

 

The Biggest Heartbreak

Some say they got Maracanazoed, others say they achieved the distinction of being the best cricketing team to not win the ODI World Cup. Either way, the defeat of the Indian team, in front of their boisterous home crowd, will easily go down as the biggest sporting heartbreak of the year. 

So Good They Start Doubting You

In a sport marred by countless tales of cheating, it’s not surprising to see people doubt an athlete who’s too good for their liking. Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard, who won his second successive Tour de France, by a record margin of 7m 27 seconds, the largest since 2014, was the subject of such skepticism throughout this event. Vingegaard was tested multiple times, but he came out clean on each occasion. 

The Dawn Of New Era?

Tennis seemed to be perpetually stuck in finding a new poster boy for the brave new world of post-Big Three. Many came, and ignited new possibilities, but eventually succumbed to the unrelenting power of Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. This is what makes Carlos Alcaraz different. The young Spaniard has shown impeccable athleticism and all-round game what many call it a perfect blend of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. Alcaraz won an epic five-setter over Djokovic in Wimbledon. 

Betting War Continues

Earlier this week, Brazil passed its gambling regulations as per which the state will get tax on sports betting. But elsewhere, the betting war wasn’t as smooth. Ivan Toney, the Premier League striker, was banned from all football-related activities for eight months for violating betting rules. The Premier League also banned gambling sponsorships at the front of the shirts. In India, the government introduced a hefty tax structure on fantasy gaming, which has grown at an unprecedented rate in the last few years.