Murali Sreeshankar knows what it means to be ‘close’ to realising a dream. On Thursday night, he had a best of 8.08 metres, which while being equal to the best by anyone else in the long jump finals at the 2022 Commonwealth Games still did not fetch him the gold. The reason: while Sreeshankar and the gold medallist from Bahamas LaQan Nairn had similar bests of 8.08m, the next best jump for LaQan was 7.98m (he also had a 7.94m) as against Sreeshankar’s second best of 7.84m.

Yet, Sreeshankar is happy. After a series of close calls, he finally got to the podium. “I’ve been waiting for a medal [at a global meet] for a very long time. I was seventh at World Indoor and World Outdoor, sixth at World Juniors, fourth Asian Indoors, sixth at Asian Games,” he said, reeling off the names of his failed tournaments after winning the silver. “I have been waiting for a global medal for a very long time, but I kept missing out. This is a small step towards my big goal of the Paris 2024 Olympics,” he added.