Sania Mirza is tipped to win Hero Indian Sports Academy's `Sportsman of the Year' award

NEW DELHI: Olympic silver medallist shooter Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore will have to beat two cricketers and a chess master to win the Hero Indian Sports Academy's (HISA) `Sportsman of the Year'. His contenders are triple centurion Virender Sehwag, India's batting mainstay Rahul Dravid and Viswanathan Anand.

Sania Mirza leads the women's pack that includes long jumper Anju George and shooters Suma Shirur and Anjali Bhagwat-Vedpathak.

The HISA on Thursday announced the list of nominees in 15 categories for the year 2005, which takes into account performances between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2004. The award ceremony will be held on July 9 in Bangalore after Delhi hosted the inaugural event and Hyderabad had it last year. The award carries a statuette and Rs. one lakh in cash.

The nominees were short-listed through the voting done by sports journalists from around the country. The founding members of the HISA will now vote through a secret ballot to choose the winners.

The nominees: Sportsman of the year: Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Virender Sehwag, Viswanathan Anand and Rahul Dravid.

Sportswoman of the year: Anju George, Sania Mirza, Suma Shirur and Anjali Bhagwat-Vedpathak.

Team of the year: Cricket (men), Shotgun shooting (men), Chess (men), Junior hockey (men).

Athletics: Anju George, Bobby Aloysius and Harishankar Roy.

Chess: Viswanathan Anand, P. Harikrishna, K. Humpy and D. Harika.

Cricket: Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and Sachin Tendulkar.

Billiards and Snooker: Pankaj Advani, Alok Kumar, Devendra Joshi and Geet Sethi.

Football: S. Venkatesh, Tomba Singh, Mahesh Gawli and Climax Lawrence.

Golf: Jyoti Randhawa, Arjun Atwal, Rahil Gangjee and Ashok Kumar.

Hockey: Adrian D'Souza, Dilip Tirkey, Gagan Ajit Singh and Tushar Khandekar.

Shooting: Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Suma Shirur, Anjali Bhagwat-Vedpathak and Mansher Singh.

Tennis: Sania Mirza, Karan Rastogi, Prakash Amritraj Harsh Mankad and Mahesh Bhupathi.

Outstanding performance in other sports: Satyadev Prasad (archery), Aparna Popat (badminton), Sourav Ghosal and Joshna Chinappa (both squash).

Young achiever (male): P. Harikrishna (chess), Shikhar Dhawan (cricket), Karan Rastogi (tennis) and Ronak Pandit (shooting).

Young achiever (female): D. Harika, K. Humpy (both chess), Sania Mirza (tennis) and Joshna Chinappa (squash).