Number of times Jawaharlal Nehru was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize: 11. Number of times he won the Nobel Peace Prize: zero. It’s been a case of so near and yet so far for India’s first Prime Minister. As well as for many others who missed the boat — awards, records and titles — by the proverbial whisker. t2 lists a few…

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet

The Academy Awards

Peter O’Toole

Richard Burton

Every film personality has a common dream: to walk up the steps of the Kodak Theatre and caress the golden statuette. Tinsel world’s ultimate honour, the statuette has adorned the mantlepiece of many a movie great since the Academy Awards were established 80 years ago. While Ben-Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings — The Return of the King have bagged 11 Oscars each and Katherine Hepburn took home no less than four of those prized statuettes, the golden man has played hide-and-seek with many. Like Irish actor Peter ’ Toole who was nominated a record eight times in the Best Actor in a Leading Role category for roles in Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Lion in Winter and My Favourite Year among others, but never won any till an apologetic Academy tried to make amends with an Honorary Oscar in 2003.

’Toole’s Becket co-star Richard Burton wasn’t even that fortunate. Elizabeth Taylor’s former husband and the heart throb of millions came within sniffing distance of the Oscar seven times between 1953 and 1978, but even stellar roles in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Equus weren’t enough to put his name on the list of Academy Award winners. Burton and ’Toole have actress Deborah Kerr for company. The star of From Here to Eternity and The King and I never won an Oscar, despite six nominations. “Always the Oscar bridesmaid, never the bride,” is how Kerr’s Oscar no-show was often described. Till an Honorary Oscar, the same antidote as ’ Toole’s, came her way in 1994.

The Mating Season actress Thelma Ritter was also nominated for six Oscars — all for Best Actress in a Supporting Role — but was unable to convert them to a single win. Among the current crop, British actress Kate Winslet has earned five nominations in the Best Actress in a Leading Role category but is yet to take home an Oscar. Winslet’s disappointment at the Oscars seems to have rubbed off on Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio who has been nominated three times for best actor, but never won. But all’s not lost for Kate and Leo. Director Martin Scorsese finally hit the bull’s eye in 2007 for The Departed — his first win after seven nominations! Martin Scorsese without an Oscar!

The Grammys

Joe Satriani

Diana Ross

Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have all won it. Joe Satriani is still looking out for his first. The Grammy Awards — considered the biggest honour by musicians across the world — has eluded the God of Guitar, despite a whopping 14 nominations till date. “Since 1988, I’ve got nominations for every record, but have never won,” the musician who has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide has often been quoted as saying. His most recent nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance was in the 2008 awards. He lost out to Bruce Springsteen.

Diana Ross joins Satriani in the no-Grammy list. The R&B-pop-soul-disco-jazz singer has been through 12 nominations in a career spanning four decades, but hasn’t registered a single win. This inspite of 18 No.1 singles to her name. And while Queen, Neil Young, Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin have never won Grammys too, none has equalled Ross’s 12 nominations.

The Booker Prize

Anita Desai

The Booker Prize is annually awarded to the best original full-length novel written in the English language. Salman Rushdie has won the Booker as well as The Booker of Bookers and recently the Best of the Booker for his 1981 novel Midnight’s Children while Nobel winner JM Coetzee has received the honour twice. But one of the most prestigious awards in the literary world has consistently eluded some of the best. Like English novelist Beryl Bainbridge who has never won, five nominations notwithstanding. Acknowledged as a “national treasure”, Bainbridge was last nominated in 1998 for Master Georgie. Dubbed as the “perpetual Booker Prize bridesmaid”, Bainbridge has said that she was delighted to have been short-listed so many times and hoped that no one else would ever beat her record. She has also been quoted as saying that she had never taken the Booker seriously but always enjoyed attending the awards dinner!

Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood finally won the Booker after losing out three times. The Booker Prize has also bypassed Indian novelist Anita Desai. The author of best-sellers like In Custody and Fasting, Feasting, was nominated three times, but never won. But Desai’s disappointment was somewhat compensated for by daughter Kiran Desai’s win in 2006. After her win, the daughter paid tribute to her mother saying that the win was like “a family endeavour”.

the Olympics

PT Usha

Milkha Singh

Abhinav Bindra’s gold at this year’s Olympics may have given a medal-starved nation a lot to smile about, but for some Indian athletes, disappointment at the Olympics turned into a lifelong nightmare. Milkha Singh was among the favourites to win the gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics, but shocked the nation when he missed out on the bronze in a photo-finish at the 400m finals! “After the death of my parents, that is my worst memory. I kept crying for days,” Singh has been quoted as saying. Such was his disappointment that India’s “Flying Sikh” made up his mind to give up sport. It was after much persuasion that he took to athletics again and won medals at the 1962 Asian Games. But never an Olympic medal.

India’s jinxed run continued at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics where golden girl PT Usha missed the bronze at the 400m hurdles race by 1/100th of a second! The country went into collective mourning with Usha claiming that she cried after the event because “it was difficult to believe that I had missed an Olympic medal by a whisker”.

England’s World Cup

The present English team may not be bringing in many laurels, but there were three occasions when English cricket came within touching distance of the World Cup trophy. England reached the finals of the 1979, 1987 and the 1992 World Cup, but did not win once. The 1987 Reliance Cup in India was the closest that England got to winning the crown, losing out to arch-rivals Australia by a mere 7 runs at Eden Gardens.

dutch World Cup

Netherlands is considered to be one of the better football teams in the world. At the peak of its success in the 1970s, the team was famous for its mastery of Total Football (a tactical theory whereby any player can take over the role of any other player in a team) and was nicknamed Clockwork Orange for its precision in passing. But the men in orange have never won the World Cup, despite reaching two consecutive finals in 1974 — led by John Cryuff it was the best team never to win the World Cup — and in 1978.

The Grand Slams

There are countless misses in the world of tennis, but we cite a few cases. One reason why Roger Federer may still not be the greatest tennis player of modern times? The winner of 13 Grand Slam titles (3 Australian Open, 5 Wimbledon, 5 US Open) has not managed to conquer Roland Garros. Despite reaching the French Open finals for the last three years, Fedex hasn’t been able to add a French Open title to his otherwise awesome resume, beaten each time by Spanish wonder kid Rafael Nadal. Federer can take heart. Former World No. 1 Pete Sampras has a record of 14 Grand Slam titles, out of which none came at Roland Garros.

If the French has eluded Federer and Sampras, then the Wimbledon title always managed to slip out of Ivan Lendl’s grasp. The Czech-born player, considered to be one of the legends of men’s tennis, won all the other Grand Slams, but never Wimbledon — a fact that tormented him through the years. In spite of two Wimbledon finals, grass remained his graveyard, probably because he had early on in his career once said “grass is for cows”. But Lendl wasn’t one to give up easily and winning Wimbledon became an obsession with him. Despite a bad back, he continued to play on the circuit. To no avail. “Sometimes I feel sorry for him because he’s a great athlete, a great tennis player, but he’s never going to win Wimbledon,” said Croatian player Goran Ivanisevic, who forced an injured Lendl to retire midway through a match in his last Wimbledon showing in 1992.

Footnote: Television actress Susan Lucci won a Daytime Emmy in 1999, her first win in 19 nominations. The win got Lucci a four-minute standing ovation from the audience. Lucci now has 21 nominations.