Basketball champion, Educationist and innovator Kiran Sandhu

Kiran Sandhu

played basketball in 1980 Asian Basketball Championship Source: Kiran Sandhu

Kiran Sandhu is the proud Punjaban who took basketball to highest levels, founded physical education in University of Delhi and now providing exchange programs to Indian and Australian schoolies.


Kiran Sandhu was born and raised in Jalandhar where she took to basketball while cycling around the courts. Started playing for her school, then for her college and finally took part in Asian Basketball Championship in 1980. The same year, she was awarded with Best Sports Women by Delhi government. Not many people know that a flyover in Delhi, i.e. the Lodi Road flyover, is dedicated to her name as an award for her basketball achievements. After that she never looked back and played in most of the national and international championships and won laurels for India. During her career she won many scholarships, awards and appreciation from various sporting sectors. But that wasn’t enough for Kiran as she always wanted to do something more for sports and for sportswomen. While working as Director Sports in Delhi’s famous Daulat Ram College, she started dreaming about another future project i.e. to start department of physical education and sports science in University of Delhi where players can come and do research / conduct comparative studies before hitting the grounds. After going through many hurdles and red-tapes, the department was finally founded in 2006.

Currently, Kiran Sandhu is based in Perth and after working as TAFE teacher, now she is providing exchange programs to Australian and Indian students where they are able to exchange cultural, sporting and educational environments. Besides this, Kiran never sits back and is helping Punjabi community in all possible ways. In 2014 she helped Australian Sikh Games held in Perth as secretary and is looking forward to volunteering in many such events in future as well.

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