By Debayan Mukherjee

Kolkata, Apr 29 (IANS): A few postal matches that Shimon Sharif had participated in during his playing days was the trigger behind him conceptualising the online international shooting championship which is helping shooters from several countries stay in touch with competition amid the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic, the former India shooter has revealed.

"When I was in the Indian team, there used to be a very interesting competition called the postal competition, postal match. I am talking about the days when we did not have video conferencing and all that," Sharif told IANS on Wednesday.

"It essentially means all shooters around the world had to shoot on the same day and send their scores to the organiser. We used to mail our scores to the organiser and according to your score, organiser used to put ranking and all and let you know where you stand. It was totally based on trust. This is early 2000s or in late 1990s I am talking about," said Sharif who represented India in the World Cup.

The second edition of the virtual tournament took place on April 25 with around 50 shooters including the likes of Sanjeev Rajput and Shahzar Rizvi taking part in it from their bedrooms and basements.

On April 15, it was conducted for the first time with the likes of star Indian shooters Divyansh Singh Panwar and Manu Bhaker taking part.

"So what we are doing is an advanced version of the postal match with electronic targets. Those days it was paper target. The World Cup I played (ISSF World Cup in Korea in 2003) was paper target.

"So when lockdown happened, postal match was in my head because I had played quite a few postal matches. When I also came back after a training session in Hungary (2007), I had gone for running target training. When I came back, we used to have postal matches for running target.

"There was no running target competition in India and as an Indian running target shooter, postal matches were very good for me," Sharif explained.

Shooters take part in the meet by logging on to the Zoom platform from their respective locations and shoot electronic targets set up in their houses, the screen for which is shared for the scores to be marked.

Sharif said he is looking to continue with online shooting competitions even after the lockdown ends as the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) has cancelled all its tournaments for this year and the Olympics is also pushed back to 2021.

"I am planning to do it every 15 days. So tentatively May 10 we can have a third edition, let's see," added Sharif, who runs the portal indianshooting.com.

Olympian Joydeep Karmakar, who missed a medal at the 2012 London Olympics by a whisker, is part of the commentary team with Sharif.

The competition is live-streamed on the internet with Indian international coaches joining in through video chats.