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Major tournaments to look forward to in the month of October
An eventful October is on the cards for sports lovers. Let's look at the tournaments to look forward to.
After an eventful September where our Indian athletes returned to action following the Tokyo Olympics, an exhilarating October awaits Indian sports fans with several big-ticket tournaments lined up.
Here's a look at the major sports event to happen in October:
Football: SAFF Championships
The 2021 SAFF Championship will be the 13th edition of the competition since its inception in 1993. It is a biennial international men's football championship and this time, it will be hosted in Male, Maldives. The five teams to play the tournament include, India, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Nepal and Maldives. India is the most successful nation in the SAFF Championship as they have won the competition a record seven times. However, in the last edition, Maldives won the title after defeating India 2-1 in the final. India will take the field on October 4, when they will play against neighbours Bangladesh.
Wrestling: World Championships
The World Wrestling Championship in Oslo, Norway is set to be underway on October 2nd. With the Tokyo Olympiansout of action, eyes will be on Pankaj, who will be filling the big shoes of Ravi Dahiya. Pankaj will face stiff competition from Tokyo Olympic bronze medalist Thomas Gilman (USA) and world silver medalist Suleyman Atli (TUR). Gilman and Atli are likely to be the top contenders for gold in Oslo. Bekhbayar Erdenebat (MGL) is also entered and will try to spoil the party.
Badminton: Thomas and Uber Cup
Star Indian shuttlers Saina Nehwal and B Sai Praneeth will lead the women and men's teams in the Thomas and Uber Cup Finals, scheduled in Denmark from October 9-17. Badminton Association of India named a 12-member Indian team for the Sudirman Cup, which is slated to take place from September 26 to October 3 in Finland. For the Thomas and Uber Cup, London Olympics bronze medallist Saina will be accompanied by the top-three singles ranks from the trials - Malvika Bansod, Aditi Bhatt, and Tasnim Mir - in the 10-member women's team. Three doubles pairs include Tanisha Crasto and Rutuparna Panda, who claimed the top spot in the trials.
Gymnastics: World Artistic Championship
Aruna Budda Reddy (Telangana), Praniti Das (Railway) and Shraddha Saipath Talekar (Maharashtra) are the three gymnasts selected by the GFI for the world competition. The 2021 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships will be held in Kitakyushu, Japan from October 18–24, 2021. The competition will take place at the Kitakyushu City General Gymnasium. It will be the third time that Japan has hosted the event, following the 1995 and 2011 editions. The competition was originally scheduled to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, before the Danish Gymnastics Federation withdrew from hosting in July 2020. In November 2020, the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique announced Kitakyushu as the replacement host city for the same dates.
Badminton: Denmark Open
The Denmark Open, or formerly known as Danish Open, is an annual badminton tournament held in Denmark and organized by Danmarks Badminton Forbund. The Denmark Open was part of the BWF Super Series Premier from 2011 to 2017. BWF categorised it as one of the five BWF World Tour Super 750 events per the BWF events structure since 2018. In 2020 edition, Kidambi Srikanth bowed out of the tournament with a 22-20, 13-21, 16-21 defeat to Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei in the men's singles quarterfinals, which ended India's campaign.
Cycling: Track Cycling World Championships
The 2021 UCI Track Cycling World Championships will be held from 20 to 24 October 2021 at the Velodrome Couvert Regional Jean-Stablinski in Roubaix, France. The championships were originally scheduled to be held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
Hockey: Women's Asian Champions Trophy
The 2021 Women's Asian Champions Trophy will be the sixth edition of the Women's Asian Champions Trophy, a biennial field hockey tournament for the six best Asian women's national teams organized by the Asian Hockey Federation. The tournament will be held at the Donghae City Sunrise Stadium in Donghae, South Korea and it was originally scheduled from 14 to 21 June 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the tournament was postponed to 26 March 2020. In January 2021 the tournament was postponed again and it will now likely be held in October 2021. The tournament has been won by three different teams. South Korea are the defending champions and have to most titles with three. Japan and India have both won the tournament once. The tournament was expanded to six teams in 2021.
Badminton: French Open
The 2021 French Open will be the 6th tournament according to the 2021 BWF World Tour following the many tournaments that got cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak early of the year. It has been part of the French Open championships, which has been held since 1935. This tournament is organized by French Badminton Federation with sanctions from the BWF.
Cricket: T20 Men's Cricket World Cup
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the fixtures for the much-awaited T20 World Cup 2021. Originally, the marquee T20 World Cup event was scheduled to start in 2020. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was suspended. Also, India was all set to host the tournament. However, the current covid-19 situation of India is not in full control to host big events like T20 World Cup. So instead of India, it will take place in UAE and OMAN in a total of 4 venues, Muscat, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah. However, The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will still hold the hosting rights for the event. Notably, UAE has been hosting big events in the pandemic era so it was the safest place for hosting the marquee World Cup event. The qualifier round of T20 World Cup 2021 will begin on October 17 and will end on October 22. Adding to it, from the next day which is October 23, the Super 12 round will start and it will end on November 8.
Meanwhile, after that, the knock-out round of the T20 World Cup 2021 will start on November 10. Notably, the first semi-finals will commence in Abu Dhabi and the second semi-final will be played in Dubai on 11 November. Also, both semi-finals have reserve days.