After playing cricket with Sehwag, Mairaj Khan excels in shooting

In 1998-99, India’s shooting ace Mairaj Ahmed Khan and former India captain Virender Sehwag were in the same Jamia Millia Islamia cricket team. Like Sehwag, Khan was an aggressive batsman. Then Khan changed track. He embraced shooting and excelled at the precision sport, bagging the team skeet bronze at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games a few days ago.

A three-time World Cup gold medallist, Khan was a left-hand batsman and obtained his bachelor’s degree in social work (1996-1999) from Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi.

“Sehwag and I were part of the university team. We played a match in Meerut, though I was not part of the playing XI. Since I batted aggressively, people used to call me Mark Greatbatch, after the left-handed New Zealand pinch hitter,” 50-year-old Khan, who has his roots in Khurja, Bulandshahar, but lives in Delhi, told Patriot.

‘Golden period’

While at Jamia, Khan became a national champion and was awarded the Athlete of the Year for 1998-99 by the university. He said he had a memorable time there. “I actually took admission in Bachelor of Sciences (mathematics) in 1995, but I found it very tough. So, someone suggested that I could change my stream, but only next year. That’s how my one year was wasted, and the next year I switched to a BA in social work and also played for the university cricket team,” he recalled.

“It was the golden period of my life. I still love going there, though now I don’t see anyone from my time there, except for a few faculty teachers who taught me,” he recalled.

Before coming to Jamia, Khan played in the CK Nayudu Trophy cricket tournament as a student of the Ahmad Saeed Khan Rifah-e-Aam Inter College in Khurja, around 98 kms from Delhi.

Switch to shooting

Khan’s switch from cricket to shooting was a bit dramatic. He used to visit the house of his cousin, Group Captain Shahrukh Shamshad (also a shooter), in Delhi.

Shamshad would take him to the Karni Singh Shooting Ranges. There, he introduced Khan to the top shooters of the day, including trap ace Mansher Singh. Soon, Khan was bitten by the shooting bug and cricket was pushed into the background.

The Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games were Khan’s second, after the 2006 Doha Games. Finally, he found the podium, bagging the skeet bronze along with Anantjeet Singh Naruka and Bhavtegh Singh Gill, after beating Kazakhstan on countback.

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Khan said he had started preparations for the World Championships to be held between November 1-14 in Doha, Qatar.

Delhi misses gold

Delhi athletes didn’t perform well in Aichi-Nagoya. Although Pawan Sehrawat and Gaurav Khatri were members of the gold-winning men’s kabaddi team, there were no individual gold medallists from the national capital.

World No. 17 Anahat Singh came close to winning gold in squash, ending up as the first Indian woman to win a singles silver at the continental games. She lost to Malaysian Sivasangari Subramaniam 4-11, 4-11, 7-11 in the final. Anahat will now have to work hard to qualify for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Pincky Balhara, the women’s 78kg kurash player, also missed gold, and settled for silver. She had won silver at the 2018 Asiad as well.

Decathlete Tejaswin Shankar, who won bronze at 2026 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, failed to come anywhere near his personal best tally of 8,057 points, finishing with 7,934 to clinch bronze in Japan.

Japan’s Yuma Maruyama, whom Shankar had cited as a tough competitor in an interview with Patriot in August, won gold with 8,123 and Chinese Chen Xinghua the silver with 8,012.