CWG 2022: Time for Athletics Federation of India to regroup men’s 4x400m relay squad

After a stupendous 3:00.25 season-best and an Asian record, at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games held last year in Japan, the men’s 4x400m relay team was expected to carry on the good work in the 2022 season.

However, a moderate time of 3:05.51 seconds at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham on Sunday, and a sixth-place finish as Jamaica’s team was disqualified, indicates a lack of depth in the 400m.

A fortnight ago at the July 15 to 24 Eugene World Athletics Championships held in Oregon, USA, the Indian team finished seventh with a time of 3:07.29 seconds in the preliminary round to bow out of the competition.

Back to the boardroom for AFI think tank after CWG 2022

Back-to-back moderate performances within a span of a fortnight at the Worlds and CWG 2022 in the men’s 4x400m relay will surely send the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) think tank back to the boardroom.

Raj Mohan, the national sprint coach, is in no mood to accept that there is a need to build a second bench, saying the top athletes will bounce back next year.

“We have several youngsters in the team. I’m sure they will improve their performance in 2023,” the national coach told Sportskeeda.

Theoretically, the national coach could be right, but practically not. Three top athletes, including India’s fastest male 400m runner of the season, Amoj Jacob, were sidelined due to injury. This impacted the national team's performance in Oregon as well at CWG 2022 as there were no good substitutes.

Jacob skipped the World Athletics Championships, but managed to recover in time for the CWG 2022.

Noah Nirmal Tom, another elite 400m runner, was ruled out of the Worlds but was included in the Commonwealth Games team. An injured Rajesh Ramesh competed at the Worlds but was dropped from the CWG 2022 team due to lack of fitness.

Without a large pool of runners that have the potential to perform consistently over a period of time, it will be a challenging task for the AFI to build a good team for the 2023 Asian Games and the 2023 Belgrade World Athletics Championships, scheduled to be held in Serbia.

Jacob was the only athlete to clock 45.33 seconds for the anchor leg of the 4x400m relay at CWG 2022. The other three runners weren’t able to dip below 46 seconds.

Muhammed Anas ran the opening leg in 46.6 seconds, while Muhammad Ajmal clocked 46.3 in the second. Naganathan Pandi was the slowest of them all as he covered the third 400m leg in 47.19 seconds.