New Delhi: A baby-faced Chandigarh gunner laid his hands on the most coveted piece of metal in the world of sports but it was a long-haired swashbuckler from Jharkhand who kept the cricket-crazy nation enamoured in an engrossing year for Indian sports.
It was quite an Indian August in Beijing as Abhinav Bindra became India's first individual Olympic gold medallist and in the same dizzy fortnight, Vijender Singh traded punches and Sushil Kumar demonstrated his full range of wrestling manoeuvres to bag bronze medals.
Elsewhere, the suave Viswanathan Anand defended his World Championship crown in Germany, mother of two MC Mary Kom juggled family and boxing to win her fourth straight world title and a nomadic Jeev Milkha Singh earned numerous frequent flier miles and four silverwares as well to rise to world number 36.
All along, cricket kept the entire nation engaged and engrossed, with Team India reaching dizzy heights under its charismatic helmsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni and a Twenty20 mania, post-Indian Premier League, sweeping the country.
Still, every other feat paled in comparison with the gold medal Bindra shot down in the 10m air rifle event on that memorable day of August 11.
Few expected the reticent shooter to strike gold but the ace marksman did just that to trigger a euphoria back home where a star-starved nation found a new hero in an introvert shooter.
Olympic glory eluded him but Gagan Narang nevertheless clocked up two perfect scores -- 600/600 in Germany and 400/400 in Bangkok -- against his name in the same year.
Earlier in June, Ronjan Sodhi did something similar by winning the gold at the ISSF World Cup in Belgrade, having equalled two world records in double trap.
It was boxing's annus mirabilis as well as Vijender, looking more a chiselled model than a boxer, returned from Beijing with the bronze medal dangling from his neck.
Akhil Kumar and Jitender Kumar fell tantalisingly short of the feat but both played their role to put India in the global boxing map.
Equally impressive was Mary Kom's feat as the mother of two returned from a two-year sabbatical to become women's world champion for an unprecedented fourth time.
Chess wizard Viswanathan Anand also ensured that he finished the year with his World Championship title safe and intact.
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Anand's 6.5-4.5 win against Vladimir Kramnik made him the first person to win the title in three different formats -- knockout (2000), tournament (2007) and matchplay (2008).
Following Anand's footsteps, Abhijeet Gupta and Dronavalli Harika went on to become the Under-20 boys' and girls' world champions respectively in Turkey.
Golf also witnessed India's coming of age and Jeev Milkha Singh shone brightest in a year illuminated by some sterling shows by the Indians.
Son of a Kolkata greenskeeper, SSP Chowrasia beat the likes of Ernie Els to win the Indian Masters, Arjun Atwal lifted the Malaysian Open and did enough on the Nationwide Tour to ensure his return to the US PGA tour next year.
The season, however, belonged to Jeev, who won four titles on three different tours to open all the Major doors and the tied ninth finish in the PGA Championship has instilled enough confidence to believe that he has the game to win a Major.
After a couple of near misses in the Asian Tour, Jeev won the Bank Austria Open in Europe and the Nagashia Shigeo Invitational Sega Sammy Cup and the Golf Nippon Series JT Cup in Japan, the last came when his wife was recuperating in a Tokyo hospital after delivering a stillborn baby.
In between, Jeev lifted the $5 million Singapore Open which not only assured him of the Asian Tour Order of the Merit title but also helped him become the first player to win more than $1 million on the Asian Tour.
Public mood, however, fluctuated with the fortune of the Indian cricket team and even though old-timers rued the retirements of former captains Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble, Dhoni's rise to captaincy in all three formats of the game proved a smooth transition.
Under him, India won a tri-series in Australia, thumped the world champions 2-0 at home Test series, blanked England 5-0 in ODI series and beat them 1-0 in the subsequent Test series.
Ganguly and Kumble perfectly timed their retirement and walked into sunset head held high. Comrade of many a battle, Sachin Tendulkar, however, felt some cricket was still left in him.
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In a highly productive year, the little master eclipsed Brian Lara as Test cricket's most prolific run getter and became the first player to score 12,000 Test runs and then stroked a sublime century in Chennai to script India's epic win against England.
It was one of those occasions when cricket scored over terrorism as Kevin Pietersen and other Englishmen returned to continue their India tour which was disrupted by the Mumbai terror attacks.
The Mumbai mayhem, however, led to a diplomatic standoff as India cancelled its Pakistan tour following the terror strikes.
Meanwhile, a Twenty20 mania swept the nation off its feat and IPL proved the most radical development in the sport since Kerry Packer's World Series of 1970s.
The who's who of international cricket volunteered for a first-of-its-kind $43.54 million auction and at the end of the 59-match extravaganza, the crown went to the cheapest outfit, the Rajasthan Royals led by the wily Shane Warne.
Indian football, under coach Bob Houghton, also showed some promising signs and the AFC Challenge Cup win gave the team a berth at the 2011 Asian Cup in Qatar.
Kolkata, meanwhile, played host to two football legends.
German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn's farewell match at the Yuba Bharati Krirangan proved a massive success while Diego Maradona's trip to Kolkata had the city under the grip of a football mania.
Individually, shuttler Saina Nehwal missed an Olympic medal but managed to break into the top 10, while cueist Pankaj Advani claimed as many as eight national and international titles, including the prestigious IBSF World Billiards Championships in September.
Tennis proved quite a let down and apart from Leander Paes' mixed doubles triumph at the US Open, there was hardly anything to cheer about.
Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi found time in between bickering to team up for the Beijing Olympics but eventual champions Roger Federer and his Swiss teammate Stanislas Wawrinka put paid to their medal hopes.
Paes, meanwhile, succumbed to a players' revolt during a Davis Cup tie and surrendered his captaincy.
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Sania Mirza, on her part, was busy battling injuries and running into one controversy from another, also sliding down the ranking chart simultaneously.
In hockey, nothing went right. The men's team could not qualify for Olympics and then a sting operation showed the then Indian Hockey Federation secretary-general K Jothikumaran accepting bribe apparently to include a player.
The International Hockey Federation refused to deal with the KPS Gill-led IHF, which was eventually replaced by an ad-hoc committee of the Indian Olympic Association.
Roped in to revive the game's fortune, a piqued Australian legend Ric Charlesworth eventually left India with bitter memories of the country.
Meanwhile, weightlifting, mired in dope scandals, selection controversies and administrative gaffes, remained the dirtiest sport in India.
Egyptian coach Magad Salama quit in February, alleging doping by senior lifters and as if to prove him right, Kavita Devi was caught in the drug net before an Asian Championship.
Manipuri lifter Monika Devi was also in the eye of a storm and was grounded hours before flying to Beijing on doping charges. It evoked consternation in Manipur and North-East and the Sports Ministry had to set up a one-man commission to investigate the issue.
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