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It was a head-scratcher. Long before Mike Denness, South Africa had India pinned to the mat in Port Elizabeth, batting to set a target and leave their bowlers enough time to get 10 wickets for victory. On day four, South Africa batted and batted, going off in rain breaks and coming back on, the lead extending to 250, 300, then 350. Still Shaun Pollock would not declare. Why, why, why? Surely that was too much respect to cricket's most reluctant tourists?

What happens to Indian athletes when their careers are on the ascent happened to Laxman.

A South African waved the argument away with quick, expressive hands, "Ah, but don't you see? No matter what, whenever any captain looks to set a target against India, he will always have one thing at the back of his mind-that 281. It's not something you just forget." Two hundred and eighty one. See if you can say it without smiling. Say it and see if it doesn't turn on a light somewhere in your soul. It has become the signature innings of Indian cricket and of its craftsman V.V.S. Laxman.

At the end of the year, it must be admitted sadly, it is also an advertisement for the ephemeral nature of Indian sporting promise. This is not a "we are like this only" MTV-style justification of why our athletes cannot cover the last mile to becoming world-class contenders. This is an attempt to come to terms with the fact that many do not always do.

SPORTS

DRUM ROLL Comeback Sport: Hockey. The Indian team wins the Junior World Cup in Hobart and the seniors, pipped at the post at the Olympics, win the Champions Challenge in Kuala Lumpur and find their way into the elite Champions Trophy after six years. Unsung Heroes: Shooter Abhinav Bindra with his junior world record and senior World Cup medal and badminton player Abhinn Shyam Gupta who won the French Open title. Champion Chokers: The Indian cricket team which lost its ninth straight one-day tournament final and threw away chances in Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. Slur Of The Year: The Arjuna Awards list that rewarded politicking not performance. Quote of the Year: "New Zealand's batting is like a cycle stand; one push and they all fall over." -Navjot Singh Sidhu

Post-281, there was blessed relief that in Laxman, India had at last found the batsman who didn't get cooked under pressure, was not afraid to attack and was bold enough to seize the tag of match-winner in a team that contained Sachin Tendulkar. What has happened to Laxman since then, all the way to the second Test against England is this: 28, 38, 15, 20, 20, 32, 29, 89, 28, 75. Two fifties in 10 innings. It would be foolish to expect him to play as he did on one magic March day, but since then he has never shown he could be half that batsman. The reasons are difficult to pin down-while the pleasant Hyderabadi has hardly looked uncomfortable in the past eight months, the scores tell of a certain slackness: whether it is in shotmaking or intent is for the more qualified to decide.

What happened to Laxman is what often happens to Indian athletes standing at an ascent in their careers. The way up means a more rigorous challenge, rarer air, and not too much company. The option is either to set up camp right where they are or put the boot up the incline, knowing full well that if the struggle so far had been painful, the only guarantee ahead was even more pain.

Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi know what they did. They won their third Grand Slam title at Roland Garros this June, almost two years after their second. They will win more but cannot turn the clock back and hope to find the momentum they had when they were at their most majestic. In 1999, instead of maximising what they brought to the table together and treating the tennis court as their common ground, they turned it into disputed territory. It was as calculated a choice as that step up the incline.

All India's champs this year will have to make similar choices soon. While their achievements, happily in plenty, have been enjoyed and celebrated, it is those decisions that will tell us what they are really made of.

India won hockey's Junior World Cup

Badminton No. 1 Pullela Gopichand is 2001's true sporting hero, the athlete whom no one knew and the badminton player everyone underestimated. Only when he had won the Holy Grail of his sport, the All England title, did the stories about a superhuman fightback from knee surgery and a post-Olympics funk emerge. He is a very tough man but should an experimental change in the laws of his sport be ratified he will have to become even tougher. The new scoring format is rapid-fire five games set to seven points where there is no time to settle in and set the pace of a match up, Gopi's big asset at the All England. He will have to defend his title playing under the new rules early next year.

The transition from old style to new has been traumatic for Indian hockey but the victory for the junior team at the World Cup in Hobart has given the first sight of hope that, at last, a way has been found. Translating that into titles is all that counts, and in the next 12 months the national team will have more than one moment of truth at the Asian Games and the world championships.

Gopichand is 2001's true sporting hero, the athlete no one knew, the player everyone underestimated.

The biggest winners this year were little people whose dilemmas will come later, but arrive they must. There is an army of Indian chess juniors who are tiny, teenage generals, wiping out opposition across the globe and taking home norms, rating points, titles. Their two leaders are awesome talents: Pentyala Harikrishna, Grand Master at 15, younger to the title than even Viswanathan Anand, and 14-year-old Koneru Humpy who has won three world junior events, including the under14 title this year. Their skills will be measured up soon, not against their peers but against Anand, against precedent, against history.

Happily, there are still a handful of young ones who are determined to follow up on their big dreams because at the moment they probably know no other way: teenage shooter Abhinav Bindra from Chandigarh is a World Cup medal winner already and he believes, like we do, that night will follow day, that he is good enough to win an Olympic medal. Squash player Joshna Chinappa, 15, has always competed in an age-group two years senior to her own because she wants to become India's first high-ranking professional.

Indian sport has enjoyed a reasonably good year, but for the athlete "reasonable" should be a profanity. It carries with it the seductive appeal of contentment, which is the enemy of all sporting pursuit. Unless the year and all the achievement it contained is turned into the push up the steepest part of the mountain, they will merely add to the many "if onlys" that decorate India's sporting hall of fame. Film director John Huston was once asked why Fat City, his acclaimed 1972 movie about a struggling boxer, had flopped. Huston's explanation is the cruel but pure truth that Indian sport and its fine practitioners, crushing obstacles and comfort zones et al, know: "Fans want champs; people don't care for the spiritual processes of the defeated."