Olympic bound Indian sailor Vishnu Saravanan has said that his contingent, comprising of Saravanan himself, Nethra Kumanan (Laser Radial), Vishnu Ganapathy and Varun Thakkar (49er Skiff), aims to draw inspiration from the former Indian cricket team captain, MS Dhoni to be cool when they compete in the Tokyo Games.
In what was a historic first, the four aforementioned Indian sailors qualified for the Olympics during the Asian Qualifiers in Oman earlier this month. This will be the first time that India will compete in as many as three sailing events in the Olympics.
Given that the sailors will be under the spotlight during the Olympics, Saravanan has said that they will have to be ‘cool-minded like MS Dhoni’ and do their job.
"I will be happy to finish in the top 50 per cent. There's no pressure because we know we're not there yet. We are young and have room to learn more. The whole nation has so much hope on us but we have to be cool-minded like MS Dhoni and do our job," he said.
MS Dhoni, throughout his career, has developed a reputation of having a calm head on his shoulders. His persistent qualities made him the only captain to lift all three ICC tournaments which include World T20 (2007), ODI World Cup (2011) and the Champions Trophy (2013).
Dhoni is still the second-most successful captain across all formats in international cricket after Ricky Ponting, having won 178 matches as a skipper compared to Ponting’s 220. It was under his captaincy that India became the Number 1 ranked team in ODI for the first time in 2013.
As for the Tokyo bound sailors, they had a training camp that was funded by the Sports Ministry in Oman for 15 days before they competed in the Olympics qualifying event.
Featured photo: AFP / Manan Vatsyayana
