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The Davis Cup tie was held in Chandigarh, India between New Zealand and India. With the cloudy Olympics campaign that India had and the controversies around it, Indian Tennis fans were eagerly awaiting to see how things would unfold.

Rohan Bopanna and Mahesh Bhupathi were banned by AITA as a result of their refusal to pair up with Leander Paes. And with Leander taking a break, a new look Indian Team comprising  Vishnu Vardhan, Yuki Bhambri, Divij Sharan and Sharan Singh took on the Kiwis.

India won 5-0 with Yuki and Vishnu winning the opening singles and then Vishnu and Sharan combined to win the doubles to give India an unassailable lead of 3-0. The reverse singles were dead rubbers which too were won by India.

Kudos to the young guns of the Indian team.

Keep it up guys!!

(By the way, this was an Asia/Ocenia Group 1 Relegation Play-off tie. Winning this keeps India into Group 1.)

Indian Football : Nehru Cup 2012 won

India retained the Nehru Cup Football 2012 defeating the much fancied and higher-ranked Cameroon in the finals at the JwaharLal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on penalties 5-4 after being locked 2-2 after regular and extra time.


(its an internet photo)

Participants
This edition saw the participation of the following countries besides India: Syria, Nepal, Maldives and Cameroon. This is an invitational tournament.

India's Journey thru the Tournament
India started the tournament with the match against Syria. The ground was all soggy with rain playing a spoil-sport. The fluency of the game was lost due to the extremely difficult situation of the ground. India utilized long balls and managed to beat Syria 2-1.

Next up was Maldives and India had an easy outing, defeating Maldives 3-0.

The next match was against neighbors Nepal. Nepal and India have played close matches in the past and have been meeting thru tournaments like SAF Games and other local tournaments. This time, too, the match was close and in fact ended in a 0-0 draw.

By this time, India had ensured themselves a place in the finals. The finals was to be played between top 2 teams of the round-robin league.

Finally, in the last  match of the round-robin, India faced Cameroon. Cameroon showed their supremacy and won 1-0.

The Finals
India and Cameroon clashed and with the ground conditions being just fine, a good spectacle was expected. India was all enthusiastic and played their hearts out. The game saw India equalising after being down 1-2 thru a penalty which Indian Skipper Sunil Chhetri converted easily. This brought the scores to 2-2. The score remained after full-time.

Extra time was played and no team could break the citadel of the other in these 15 minutes of extra time. This locked score meant that the winner would be decided by the lottery of penalty kicks. Indeed, its a lottery as many famed players have missed the penalty even in their prime.

The Penalties went on script and it was 5-4 with the last kick to be taken by Cameroon. This is when the things went wrong for Cameroon and the missed penalty meant that India won and regained the Nehru Cup for the third time.

(Interesting fact: While we all rejoiced the win against Cameroon, what was missed was the fact that this was a Cameroon B team.)