Commonwealth Games 2022 Live: PV Sindhu, Manpreet Singh lead India out at CWG Opening Ceremony, Birmingham

Duran Duran brings the proceedings to a loud and bright end. That is that from this opening ceremony but it is not even close to being the end. Over the next two weeks, the athletes who were in the parade today and those who couldn’t make it will give it their all to win those elusive CWG medals. We will be covering every bit of it here and so do stay with us for all of it. It’s goodbye for now! 

The party will be ended by the big ticket British pop act. If you were someone who were exposed to music from that side of the world in the 1980s, this might be a nice little moment for you. 

The Prince of Wales, reading out from the Queen’s letter, declares the Games open. 

The Baton finally gets passed over to Louise Martin who does some fidgeting as she takes out a message from UK’s Queen Elizabeth II. It is read out by the Queen’s son Charles, Prince of Wales. The Baton went through the hands of hockey’s Alex Danson, table-tennis’s Kim Daybell, boxing’s Galal Yafai, gymnast Max Whitlock, and track and field’s Denise Lewis before reaching Martin. 

Diver Tom Daley brings the baton into the stadium. Its journey started out in Cyprus and has travelled 90,000 miles before reaching here. 

The ceremonial Commonwealth Games flag is brought out and hoisted after which Commonwealth Games Federation Louise Martin walks out to give a speech. 

The hosts are the last to walk out with Queen’s We Will Rock You blaring out at the Alexander Stadium. Their contingent is made of 400 athletes and they are all out there in red blazers and white shirts. 

So we now reach the continent that has the host nation. Cyprus, Gibraltar, Gurnsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Malta, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The standout in this contingent, of course, is Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, having recently won the 100m at the World Athletics Championships for a record 5th time!

Pakistan walk out shortly after India. Wrestler Mohammad Imam and Bismah Maroof, the talismanic captain of the cricket team. It has to be noted that the comedian Joe Lycett introduced the Asian countries by saying, “I’m going to do something now that the British government doesn’t always do and welcome some foreigners.” The commentators studiously ignore that little moment. 

Manpreet Singh and PV Sindhu lead out the Indian athletes as expected. 215 athletes accross 16 disciplines. India’s medal tally in the last CWG was their best after the 2010 haul, in which they won over 100 medals. 

Bangladesh is the first country to walk out. Here we go then, the Indians could walk out any time now. 

Some of the countries walking out are Birmingham Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Isles, Canada, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Falkland Islands, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Helena, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vinc & Grenadines, The Bahamas, Trinidad & Tobago and Turks & Caicos Isles.

South Africa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles are some of the countries that have walked out so far. South African swimmer Chad Le Clos has won a total of 17 medals. He could very well become the most succesfull athlete in the history of CWG. 

The Kenyans walk out and with that is a virtual message from long distance running great Eliud Kipchoge.

Botswana is the first African nation to walk out, the continent’s oldest democracy and is followed by Cameroon.

Australia are followed by countries like the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Fiji and then, of course, New Zealand, who have hosted the Games themselves on a few occasions in the past. 

The CWG champions Australia are the first country to walk out. 6500 athletes from all 72 countries and territories will have the opportunity to walk out in front of the crowd for the first time this games. Australia themselves have a healthy 433 athletes in their contingent. 

Bhangra rang out in the stadium briefly as different sets of dancers paid tribute to different cultures who reside in the city. The dancers show the different cultures starting to clash instead of working together and that angers the bull again. The bull is eventually calmed down and the metal armours from its body is taken away in a rather calming sequence. 

Female chain makers pull into the stadium a 10 metres high iron bull, a tribute to the dark history of women chain makers who were known as white slaves in the late 19th century in the city. The female workers in these factories were underpaid and overworked. The chains they made, the commentators say, was used in the slave trade but their state was no better than that of the slaves themselves. The bull breaks free of the chains and seems to run amock before being calmed down by Stella, the protagonist of the ceremony.

Opening ceremonies of multi-sporting events does provide some rather strange mash-ups and this is one of those. Tony Lommi, guitarist of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, performs as dancers perform ballet in prop ‘canals’, a tribute to the miles and miles of waterways that exist in Birmingham. This is followed by a rendition of Hear My Voice, with dancers from Critical Mass, a 300-strong dance collective from across the West Midlands, bust some moves. Soweto Kinch, Indigo Marshall and Gambimi also participate.

The Pakistani activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate is currently based in the city. She starts out by speaking about how she was welcomed into the city by those she and her family interacted with. She ends her speech by saying “Welcome to Birmingham”. 

An artistic depiction of Birmingham’s cultural evolution, which includes a little tribute to the great Charlie Chaplin, who hails from the city. 

The national anthem is followed with a fly-by from the Red Arrows, the aerobatics display team of the British Royal Air Force. 

The cars stand in the formation  of the British flag in the middle of stadium and Birmingham Conservatoire graduate and mezzo-soprano Samantha Oxborough performs the country’s national anthem.  

Birmingham has played a pioneering role in the history of the British automotive industry. 72 cars from across five decades have been assembled in the stadium as tribute to this and the commentators says these are all locals driving their own cars into the middle. Among them, are Prince Charles, driving his Aston Martin which he bought in the 1970s.   

Indian classical singer Ranjana Ghatak takes the lead after Tetteh. The section is intended to showcase the diversity of Birmingham. A mixture of live performances and an AV sequence. 

Well the ceremony has begun. Drummer-percussionist Abraham Paddy Tetteh is leading the ‘call-to-gather’ to start things off at the Alexander Stadium. 

The Games will be held in 14 venues accross Birmingham. These include the Arena Birmingham for gymnastics, the Coventry Building Society Arena for rugby sevens, wrestling and Judo, the Channock Chase forest for cycling and mountain bike, the University of Birmingham’s hockey and squash centres, Sandwell Aquatics Centre, Smithfield for 3×3 basketball, 3×3 wheelchair basketball and beach volleyball and the Lee Valley VeloPark for track cycling and para track. The Birminghan National Exhibition Centre is the venue for a plethora of sports like badminton, boxing, table tennis, weightlifting and its para-sport variants. Finally, there is Edgbaston, a name familiar for Indian cricket fans and it will be where the women’s T20 tournament will take place.

Three students from the School of Jewellery in Birmingham have designed the medals, ribbons, and boxes that will be awarded to athletes at the Games. The gold, silver, and bronze medals are being made in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, and key features of the design include symbolising an aerial map of the host region’s road and canal network.

The Indians will be fitted in bandhgala suits for the occassion. Athletes are posting photos on their social media handles and so is the Sports Authority of India. 

Australia’s shooting governing body has launched a social media campaign to get shooting included in the programme for the 2026 Commonwealth Games and so it is not only India who are angry about the sport being ommitted. One can understand why India was so dismayed though. One always hates to see a sport with so much history getting dropped from the CWG but for India, shooting constitutes 27 percent of all medals won by the country in the event.

The Indian contingent consists of 215 athletes and they will be competing accross 16 disciplines. 

India won 26 Gold medals and a total of 66 medals at Gold Coast 2018, thus finishing third on the medal table. This was their best finish at the CWG since the 2010 Games, which the country hosted.  

There will be a whole lot packed into the three and a half or so hours that have been allocated for this extravaganza. It will feature from Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi will feature as well as talents such as Indigo Marshall and Gambini. ‘80’s heartthrobs Duran Duran are the headlining musical act.  

India face Australia in their first match which starts at 3.30pm IST, which means it 11am local time. PTI reports that the team may give the ceremony a miss because of the early start. 

We aren’t used to cricketers saying things like they are competing for a gold medal but that is exactly what India’s women’s team stars have been saying for the past few days. Women’s T20 cricket makes its debut this year at the CWG and cricket itself is making a comeback after 1998. 

There will be 1,875 medals up for grabs across all the sporting events, and for the first time ever in a global, multi-sport event, there are more women’s events than men’s. The Games website also states that “over 14,000 volunteers” will be working across events over the next 11 days with over 2,000 involved in tonight’s opening ceremony.

The venue for the opening and closing ceremonies of Birmingham 2022, and the athletics events as well, was where Neeraj Chopra won a historic silver medal at the World Championships just a fortnight back. The Alexander Stadium has been the home of UK Athletics since 2011 and underwent extensive renovations for the CWG over the past three years. 

A groin injury ruled out Neeraj Chopra from the Commonwealth Games which meant that India had to find a new flagbearer. Few could argue against PV Sindhu, who has won medals in nearly every major tournament she has played in at least once. Sindhu had also been India’s flagbearer at Gold Coast 2018. This time, though, she could not be alone in front of the contingent, with the Games organising committee informing the IOA that there has to be a male flagbearer as well, after which Manpreet was selected. Manpreet had been India’s flagbearer at the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony as well. 

It’s time for lights and dancers and singers and fireworks because the Commonwealth Games are back! Birmingham 2022 has had the kind of build-up that few other editions of the CWG had, thanks to the pandemic and, from an Indian perspective, the threats of a boycott that came in July 2019 from the IOA due to the omission of shooting from the list of events. Yet, here we are, with India dispatching a contingent of more than 200 athletes. What is a big sports even without some drama after all. In a few hours, we will see the CWG being officially declared open. Stay tuned!