Abhinav Bindra lambasts Dronacharya Award selection panel for overlooking seasoned shooting coach Jaspal Rana

New Delhi: India’s lone Olympic individual gold medallist Abhinav Bindra on Saturday criticised the selection panel for not nominating seasoned coach Jaspal Rana for the Dronacharya Award. Rana, himself a multiple Asian Games gold-medallist marksman, has groomed the likes of teen sensations Manu Bhaker, Saurabh Chaudhary and Anish Bhanwala into world-class shooters, and Bindra said his wards should prove the selection committee wrong with their performance in next year’s Tokyo Olympics. Slamming the selection panel which nominates people for the award, Bindra said on Twitter that he hoped that Rana being snubbed will prove to be an impetus for the Indian shooters who’ll look to prove the panel wrong and force them to nominate their coach for the next awards.

I can attribute much of my success to having wonderful coaches. @jaspalrana2806 has earned my respect as one of the best & it is disappointing to see him overlooked for the Dronacharya.Hope this gives his wards the impetus to train harder &prove the committee wrong at Tokyo2020

— Abhinav A. Bindra OLY (@Abhinav_Bindra) August 17, 2019

The selection panel nominated Vimal Kumar (badminton), Sandeep Gupta (table tennis) and Mohinder Singh Dhillon (athletics) for the Dronacharya Award regular category while Mezban Patel (hockey), Rambir Singh Khokar (kabaddi), Sanjay Bhardwaj (cricket) were picked for the Dronacharya Award in the lifetime category. Dronacharya Awards are given to honour eminent coaches who have successfully trained sportspersons or teams and enabled them to achieve outstanding results in international competitions. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh.