‘Parampara, Pratishtha, Anushasan’: How 18-year-old Suruchi Singh became India’s new shooting sensation | More sports News

NEW DELHI: In the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Mohabbatein, Amitabh Bachchan’s character, Narayan Shankar, lays down three pillars of a gurukul: “Parampara, Pratishtha, Anushasan (Tradition, Prestige, Discipline)”.
For Havildar Inder Singh, these weren’t just words, but the foundation he sought when scouting for a shooting academy for his daughter Suruchi Singh in the post-pandemic era.
The search led him to Suresh Singh, a retired army man running Guru Dronacharya Shooting Academy in Gurugram, Haryana.
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“There are open tournaments all over Haryana, so her family had heard of us. When both father and daughter visited, they appreciated the discipline here. Her father told me, ‘I want a place where my daughter will learn discipline,’” Suresh Singh recalls during an exclusive interaction with TimesofIndia.com.
On their first meeting, Coach Suresh made one thing clear:
“I asked them, ‘Do you want to follow your technique, or mine?’ If it’s just about pulling the trigger, fine. But if it’s my method, there’s a system. They agreed. I said, ‘Give me six months. If you like the progress, we will continue.’”

Suruchi was enrolled. And soon, results followed. The Jhajjar-born won medals at the 2022 and 2023 Nationals.
Year 2024 proved to be her breakthrough year, with a stunning haul of seven gold medals at the Nationals in Delhi, followed by two more at the National Games in Uttarakhand earlier this year.
Over the past weeks, the 18-year-old shooter has gone international, with Suruchi clinching gold in the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team event at the ISSF World Cup alongside Olympian Saurabh Chaudhary on Wednesday.

This was her third World Cup gold this season, having already won the individual 10m Air Pistol events in Peru and Argentina, plus a bronze in the mixed team event.
“She’s really in a rhythm. This girl is not going to stop now,” her coach adds with unshakable confidence. “We’ve worked consistently for two years. She’s been training with me for three and a half years now, but the focused, continuous work started about two years ago.”

‘Coach, you’re wasting my time’

While her recent heroics may make her look like one, Suruchi wasn’t born a sharpshooter. She had drive, but her matches would spill beyond regulation time.
“She’d shoot for long hours, but matches last about 75 minutes. Earlier, she couldn’t finish a match properly. I noticed this and focused on correcting it,” reveals Suresh.
In the beginning, she was impatient, even blunt.
“I told her, ‘If you want to succeed, control your impulses.’ To be a top shooter, you have to control your emotions and not rush. At first, she would say, ‘Sir, you’re wasting my time,’ but eventually she understood,” he sighs.

For the first few months, Suresh kept the prodigy away from participating in any competition, only focusing on practice.
After two months of just training, she entered one match and showed progress.
Then two more months of sheer practice, then one more match. “Slowly, she reached a point where she could handle a match once a week,” reveals Suresh.

‘Sir, I have five minutes before I go in’

Now, before every match, even during this ISSF World Cup, Suruchi has a ritual: calling her coach.
“Before every match, she’d do a video or WhatsApp call. She’ll say, ‘Sir, I have five minutes before I go in, what should I do?’ I give her a quick pep talk. It clears her mind. She goes in fresh and performs,” adds Suruchi’s coach.

‘If she weren’t at the World Cup today…’

Back home in Jhajjar, if she weren’t winning medals, she’d be harvesting wheat.
“She comes from a humble family. At home, she runs machinery, helps on the farm. She’s not one to sit idle. If she weren’t at the World Cup today, she’d be home harvesting wheat,” Coach Suresh tells TimesofIndia.com.
From Suresh’s narrative, what stands out about the 18-year-old is her grit.

“She’s incredibly stubborn — in the best way,” he smiles. “For example, if she plans to shoot 150 shots that day, and the final shot doesn’t land on the perfect score (a ten), she won’t stop until she gets it.”
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As Suruchi will be returning home from the ISSF World Cup with a neck full of medals, her coach Suresh is preparing a celebration fit for his protege: “We’ll go to the airport to receive her. We’ll talk to the Haryana Rifle Association and National Rifle Federation and request them to allow us to bring her home directly from the airport.”