From Cricket Nation to Multi-Sport India: Which Indian Sports Are Becoming Global Forces?
India’s 85-medal Asian Games campaign in Aichi-Nagoya was not simply a bigger medal tally. It offered a more revealing question: which Indian sports have developed enough depth to compete internationally, and which still depend primarily on continental success?
India finished the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya fourth overall with 85 medals—21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze. That was below India’s record 106-medal haul in Hangzhou, but the final table tells only part of the story. The more interesting development was the range of sports in which Indian athletes reached the podium. Olympics
For decades, India’s international sporting identity has been dominated by cricket, with hockey, kabaddi and a handful of individual athletes providing additional global recognition. The Aichi-Nagoya Games suggest that picture is becoming more complicated.
Archery produced historic breakthroughs. Shooting continued to generate elite performers. Athletics produced 24 medals. Women’s golf achieved a landmark first. At the same time, the results also exposed an uncomfortable reality: success at the Asian Games does not automatically make a sport a global powerhouse.
That distinction matters as India looks toward the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
Archery: perhaps the clearest sign of a new Indian sporting depth
The strongest evidence of India’s growing sporting ambition came from archery.
India won five gold medals in archery, including team and individual success across compound and recurve disciplines. Seventeen-year-old Kumkum Mohod became the first Indian woman to win individual recurve gold at the Asian Games, while India’s women’s recurve team also defeated South Korea—ending a dominance that had stretched back to 1998. NDTV Sports
Mohod’s performance was particularly significant because recurve is an Olympic discipline.
She defeated South Korea’s Oh Ye-jin in a dramatic shoot-off after the final was tied, producing a perfect 10 with her deciding arrow. She also won women’s team gold and a mixed-team silver, giving her three medals on her Asian Games debut. Loksatta
The story is bigger than one teenager.
India’s archery programme now has athletes competing successfully across both compound and recurve, a distinction that matters because compound archery is not currently an Olympic discipline while recurve is.
That gives India’s success a potentially significant Olympic pathway.
And for Indians abroad, archery is also an instructive example of how a sport can develop from specialist programmes into an international competitive ecosystem.
India is no longer simply producing an occasional exceptional archer.
It is producing teams capable of beating established Asian powers.
Shooting: elite talent, but the global test is harder
Shooting remains one of India’s most productive individual sports.
At Aichi-Nagoya, India collected three shooting gold medals, including Neeru Dhanda’s historic individual women’s trap victory. Dhanda became the first Indian woman to win individual Asian Games gold in trap. She and Kynan Chenai also won mixed-team trap gold, setting an Asian Games record. Press Information Bureau
India also produced medals in rifle and pistol events.
But this is where the distinction between continental strength and global dominance becomes important.
Asian competition in shooting is exceptionally deep. China, South Korea, India, Japan and several other nations regularly produce Olympic-level shooters. ISSF results from Aichi-Nagoya also demonstrate the intensity of that competition, with Asian athletes setting world and Asian records. ISSF
India therefore has a credible global shooting programme, but the appropriate conclusion is not that India has already become the world’s dominant shooting nation.
The more defensible conclusion is this:
India has built enough depth to remain a serious Olympic medal contender across several shooting disciplines.
That is already a major transformation.
Athletics: the numbers are impressive—but the gold-medal gap matters
Athletics provides perhaps the most useful reality check.
Indian athletes won 24 athletics medals—one gold, nine silver and 14 bronze. The 75-member athletics squad competed across 41 medal events, and four national records were established. The Financial Express
The sheer number of podium finishes demonstrates breadth.
Distance runner Gulveer Singh, for example, won three medals across the 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m. The women’s 4x400m relay team eventually delivered India’s sole athletics gold. Athletics India
But 24 medals with only one gold tell us something important.
India is becoming competitive across a broad section of Asian athletics, but it has not yet translated that breadth into dominance.
That distinction will become even more important at the Olympics, where the world’s best athletes from Africa, Europe, the Americas and Oceania enter the competition.
Neeraj Chopra has already demonstrated that an Indian athlete can become a genuine global force in an athletics event.
The next challenge is creating enough athletes at that level that Chopra is no longer an exception.
Golf: a breakthrough with global implications
Women’s golf delivered one of the most interesting stories of the Games.
Pranavi Urs became the first Indian woman to win an individual Asian Games golf gold medal. She finished at 15-under-par 265, one stroke ahead of the runner-up, while India also won women’s team silver with Urs, Aditi Ashok and Diksha Dagar. Prime Minister of India
The achievement also ended a long wait for India in Asian Games individual golf. The country’s previous individual gold had come in the men’s event through Shiv Kapur in 2002.
But golf is different from many Asian Games sports because its most important competitive ecosystem is already global.
The real test for Urs, Ashok, Dagar and India’s next generation is not simply Asian competition.
It is the LPGA Tour, Ladies European Tour and global professional circuit.
That is why the Asian Games gold could matter beyond the medal itself.
It gives another generation of Indian golfers a visible pathway from domestic competition to international professional golf.
Hockey, kabaddi and cricket: still India’s reliable giants
India’s sporting diversification should not be confused with the decline of its traditional strengths.
India won gold in men’s and women’s hockey, men’s and women’s cricket and men’s and women’s kabaddi. The Tribune
These remain crucial pillars of India’s sporting identity.
But there is a difference between them.
Cricket is already a global commercial sport, although its international footprint remains narrower than football or athletics. Hockey has a genuinely international competitive structure and Olympic history. Kabaddi remains an Indian-led sport with growing international participation but does not yet have Olympic status.
That makes their success difficult to compare directly with archery, shooting or athletics.
A medal in an Asian Games sport where India already has structural dominance is valuable.
But a breakthrough against a historically dominant opponent in an Olympic discipline can have a different developmental significance.
The next generation is changing the picture
Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of Aichi-Nagoya was the range of ages represented.
Kumkum Mohod was only 17 when she became an Asian Games champion. At the other end of the spectrum, 50-year-old shooter Mairaj Ahmad Khan represented the longevity possible in elite sport. The Indian Express
That matters because sustainable sporting systems need more than one generation.
The ideal pathway is:
young athlete → national programme → international junior competition → senior international circuit → Olympic contender.
India has historically struggled to create this pathway consistently outside a small group of sports.
The emerging evidence suggests that targeted funding, specialist academies, foreign competition, sports science and greater professionalisation are beginning to change that.
The Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) is part of this wider ecosystem, providing support to identified elite athletes and prospective Olympic medallists.
But funding alone cannot manufacture champions.
India still needs better coaching, sports medicine, competition exposure, facilities, talent identification and long-term athlete development.
The global test begins after the Asian Games
The phrase “multi-sport India” is increasingly justified—but with an important qualification.
India is becoming a multi-sport medal country.
It is not yet a multi-sport global superpower.
That distinction is crucial.
China’s enormous Asian Games advantage demonstrates what decades of systematic investment can produce. Japan and South Korea have similarly deep sporting ecosystems. European countries, the United States and Australia have highly developed pathways in different disciplines.
India’s next challenge is therefore not simply to increase the Asian Games medal count.
It is to convert Asian success into World Championship and Olympic success.
Archery must challenge South Korea and other global powers consistently.
Shooters must turn continental medals into Olympic finals and medals.
Athletics must produce multiple global finalists rather than relying on exceptional individuals.
Golfers must convert Asian success into sustained professional-tour performance.
And emerging sports must develop enough depth that one injured athlete does not collapse an entire medal campaign.
What this means for Indians around the world
For the Indian diaspora, this sporting transformation has another dimension.
Indian athletes increasingly compete on global professional circuits, while Indian-origin communities abroad provide audiences, sponsors, coaching networks, sports academies and commercial opportunities.
A more diverse Indian sporting economy could eventually create a new form of diaspora connection—not just through cricket clubs, but through archery academies, golf programmes, athletics events, shooting clubs, sports technology and athlete sponsorship.
That could become increasingly important as India’s sporting market grows.
The global Indian community has already helped make cricket a commercial phenomenon outside South Asia.
The next question is whether the same network can help create international audiences for India’s emerging sports.
From cricket nation to sporting nation
The Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games should therefore not be interpreted simply as India winning 85 medals.
The more meaningful story is the changing distribution of Indian ambition.
Cricket remains extraordinarily powerful. Hockey and kabaddi remain formidable Asian forces.
But archery is beginning to challenge an established Asian order. Shooting is producing a deep international pipeline. Athletics is expanding its medal base. Golf has produced a historic women’s breakthrough.
And behind these results is a generation of athletes who increasingly expect to compete internationally rather than merely participate.
That may ultimately be the biggest change.
India’s sporting future will not be defined by replacing cricket. It will be defined by making cricket one part of a much larger sporting identity.
The 2026 Asian Games did not prove that India has become a global sporting superpower.
They showed something arguably more useful:
India is building the foundations from which a multi-sport global power could emerge.
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