With Christmas almost upon us and the sporting year drawing to a close, it’s time to dust down those tuxedos and shine up them shoes as we hand out the gongs to mark another fabulous year for Asian sport.

Not that you’d have known it from watching the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards last week though, when all we were treated to vis-à-vis Desi brilliance on the sporting field was a 15-second clip showing Sachin Tendulkar breaking the Test run-scoring record and a ten-second excerpt of the moment Mark Ramprakash scored his hundredth first-class hundred.

Cricket in total merited only a few minutes’ airtime, shorter than the time Jake Humphreys spent interviewing Scottish tennis ace Andy Murray’s mum or the time it took Team GB’s cyclists to career down the specially-built ramp and almost knock Sue Barker and Gary Lineker off their feet, though at least that was funny.

But fear not, we at InsideDesi do not feel the achievements of Asia’s sporting superstars should go unrewarded. So earlier on this week myself and the team - even Lady J - got together at ID Towers and brainstormed into the early hours…

After much heated debate and coffee by the vatful, we finally decided on the winners, with the silverware dished out at our slap-up bash last night at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane.

And now, hot off the press, here are our winners:-

Young Sports Personality of the Year: Ajantha Mendis.

The Sri Lankan spinner burst onto the scene at the Asia Cup in Pakistan in the summer, with 18 wickets in five matches, including a scarcely credible analysis of 8-1-13-6 to win the final against India.

Dubbed the new Murali, the 23-year-old from Moratuwa came into the game relatively late, having joined the army - rising to the rank of Second Lieutenant - before swapping the battle field for the cricket field.

He possesses all the tricks in the locker, bamboozling the famed Indian batting line-up with a variety of googlies, off-breaks, top-spinners, flippers and leg breaks, as well as his trademark carrom ball, where the bowler flicks the ball between thumb and middle finger, sowing no end of confusion in the batsmen’s minds.

Team of the year: India

So, how does a team improve on one-day series wins over West Indies, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan, victory in the inaugural Twenty20 World Championships and a first Test series win in England for 20 years? With more of the same.

This calendar year India’s cricketers have won one-day series in Australia - beating the world champions away for the first time in 23 years - and Sri Lanka, beaten Pakistan in Bangladesh and walloped England 5-0 at home.

The Test team, meanwhile, have performed even better, beating Australia in Perth and South Africa in Kanpur at the start of the year and in the past few months annihilating the Aussies 2-0 and taking a seemingly impregnable 1-0 lead against England.

They even had the luxury of changing coaches midway through the year, and had to cope with the retirement of former captain Saurav Ganguly.

Coach of the Year: Bob Houghton

A player in the sixties with Fulham and Brighton, his career cut short by injury at the age of 21, Houghton is one of the most experienced coaches in the game, the highlight leading Malmo to the European Cup final in 1970.

Since taking charge of India’s national football team in 2006, he’s guided them to two major trophies, the 2007 Nehru Cup and 2008 Asian Football Confederation Challenge Cup as well as the reaching the final of this year’s South Asian Football Federation Cup.

That defeat was the only match India lost this year, winning twelve and drawing three, a record which should help draw more youngsters into the game in the cricket-mad country.

British Asian sportsman of the year: Ravi Bopara

A strange choice admittedly, what with fewer than 300 runs and a solitary wicket to his name in 2008, Bopara makes the cut more on potential than results, what little success he’s had coming in spite of the selectors who’ve given him his chance.

The England hierarchy have seen fit to shuffle him up and down the batting order, from opener to number eight and all points in between, though it hasn’t fazed him too much, the Essex all-rounder hitting an unbeaten 54 at number eight in Rajkot and a 60 after opening the batting just two games later in Kanpur.

If the selectors play him in a fixed position, show some patience and elevate him to the Test XI I’ve no doubt whatsoever that he’ll fulfil his undoubted talent - one to watch out for in 2009.

Lifetime achievement award: Norman Pritchard (awarded posthumously)

Now there’s a name I bet you’ve never heard of! Calcutta-born Pritchard was India’s first Olympic medallist, winning silver in the 200 metres and 200 metres hurdles at the Paris Olympics of 1900. He was also a decent amateur footballer and later went on to become a Hollywood film star, appearing in several silent movies.

Pritchard is the first Asian to win an Olympic medal, though his name is little known; only recently did he return to prominence, a century on, during the Beijing Olympics, thanks to the achievements of our next award winner.

Sports Personality of the Year: Abhinav Bindra

Golden-eye, the man with the golden gun, gold finger… all the puns came pouring out following Abhinav’s gold medal winning performance in August, whipping a nation into Olympic-mania after becoming the first Indian in history to win an individual Olympic gold medal.

For a nation of more than a billion to have performed so abjectly in the 112-year history of the modern Olympics is nothing short of embarrassing, by some distance the worst performing nation per capita.

But on a scorching Monday morning in a sports hall in Beijing, India’s relationship with the Olympics changed forever, sparking a media frenzy as Bindra came from behind to beat local boy Zhu Qinan to a place in the history books.

And the best thing about him? He just looks so ordinary, so normal, with a straight-laced haircut and sporting a pair of glasses, the most unlikely of heroes, but a man about whom stories will be written long after we’re all dead.

Fan of the Year: Danny Lal

Most normal people carry a picture of their partner in their wallet, maybe one of their children or at a stretch their pets. But not Danny Lal, an Indian who gives a whole new meaning to the term sports mad.

According to Test Match Special’s Vic Marks, Lal keeps a photo of VVS Laxman in his wallet. Now that’s what you call dedication to the cause; puts the rest of us to shame.

So before you all head off to Snappy Snaps to get yourselves a passport-sized photo of Sachin let me wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year!

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