Taekwondo ace Deepak Bista retained NSJF LG Male Player of the Year (PoY) Award announced amidst a ceremony at the Nepal Academy Hall, Kamaladi on Wednesday. Deepak had also won the award last year but could not receive the award himself as he was in South Korea for training.
Deepak represented Nepal in the last month’s Beijing Olympics 2008 and is only the second Nepali player to qualify for the summer games. Deepak won bronze in Vietnam in the Asian Qualifying Championship and was declared the best fighter of the qualifiers. Deepak, who has also won three gold medals in the last three South Asian Games has already said that he will retire from the sport after the next SA Games.
“I’m very happy to win this award and would like to dedicate this award to my family, Olympic Committee and the taekwondo associaiton,” said Deepak. Deepak also has two bronze medals in the Asian Games in his medal tally and won a silver in the First World Cultural Festival held in Korea. The other nominees for the award were football’s Ramesh Budhathoki and Jumanu Rai, cricket’s Paras Khadka, and Prem Prasad Pun of archery.
Cricket and badminton player Nary Thapa won the Female PoY Award beating Bibidha Rimal and Saila Rana of swimming, Jhanta Katuwal of weightlifting and cricket’s Nira Rajopadhyaya.
Nepali women’s team captain Nary led the team to the final of the ACC Women’s Tournament, taking 12 wickets in five matches at an impressive economy rate of 1.26. She was also declared the Best Emerging Asian Women Cricketer of the Year by the Asian Cricket Council.
NSJF honored Pokhara’s Sahara Club for its contribution in Nepali Sports sector and also in social work. Sahara’s stand-in president Keshav Baral received the award and thanked NSJF for recognizing Sahara’s contribution. “Sahara is now planning to establish a football academy for orphans and this award will definitely encourage us,” Baral said.
Meanwhile, Cricket Association of Nepal’s former president Jaya Kumar Nath Shah was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution in Nepali cricket. “This award is a very special one to me,” thanked Shah who also decided to hand over Rs 15,000 that he won to the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund for the Koshi flood victims.
Jumanu Rai won the newly added Popular Player of the Year category. In a total of 149,359 SMS votes, Jumanu received 65,359 votes. Nepal and Nepal Police Club (NPC) forward Jumanu has struck a total of 10 goals this year including six for the country. Basketball player Bipendra Maharjan, footballer Anil Gurung, Nary Thapa and cricketer Parash Khadka were the other nominees in the category.
Likewise, Nepal and NPC football team coach Birat Krishna Shrestha was the Coach of the Year ahead of women cricket team’s coach Junga Bahadur Thapa, U-19 cricket coach Roy Dias, archery’s Yogendra Sherchan and taekwondo’s South Korean coach Kwon Hyouk Joung.
U-19 cricket captain Paras won the Young PoY Award before missing out on both the best male and popular categories. Paras led Nepal to victory in the ACC Elite Cup to qualify for the Youth World Cup for the fifth time in a row. In the competition, Nepal lost to West Indies in the Plate Championship final but Paras was in contention for the Player of the Tournament award until the last match.
Paras beat NPC goalie Ritesh Thapa, fellow cricketer Amrit Bhattarai, taekwondo player Anju Raut and golfer Shiva Ram Shrestha for the award. The best players in the male and female categories also pocketed Rs 25,000 each while the other category winners pursed Rs 15,000 each. NSJF also picked one of the voters in the Popular Player of the Year category. Prateek Gurung, the owner of the lucky number 9846029637, will get an LG mobile set.
AIPS