Dhyan Chand
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Why he is the greatest
Known for his sublime goal-scoring laurels and extraordinary ball control, Dhyan Chand is regarded as the greatest field hockey player of all time. More so for earning three gold medals for India during the 1928, 1932 and 1936 Olympics, a feat that made India a force to reckon with in hockey. Having scored more than 400 goals during his international career, Dhyan Chand would go on to play till 1948, at which time he was 42.
Greatness was something Dhyan Chand was destined for. Initially his focus laying more on wrestling, it wasn't until the age of 14 that Dhyan Chand took up hockey and only on his maiden international tour of New Zealand in 1926, scored 10 goals out of 20 in one match. A year later, he would score 36 of 72 Indian goals in 10 matches at the London Folkestone Festival . In the final of the 1928 Olympics, Dhyan Chand netted two of the three Indian goals in the final against the Netherlands. He had also topped the chart with 14 goals. At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, Dhyan Chand scored 12 goals in two matches as India won gold again. A third straight Hockey title at the Games was captured when he took the field barefoot in the second half of the final against Germany and helped India win 8-1.
Details
Tushar Bhaduri, Aug 31, 2024: The Indian Express
Wizard of the game
Quite simply, Dhyan Chand, born in Allahabad in 1905, was the first superstar of hockey, and considered a wizard of the game. He was the chief protagonist as India won three consecutive Olympic hockey gold medals — Amsterdam 1928, Los Angeles 1932, and Berlin 1936. He is said to have wowed the watching public with his sublime skills, intricate dribbling and gluttonous appetite for scoring.
During those tournaments, there was no team that could compete with India — and most of India’s matches were won with huge victory margins. India beat hosts the Netherlands 3-0 in the 1928 final, the United States were thrashed by a scarcely-believable margin of 24-1 in the 1932 gold medal match, while Germany went down 8-1 in the 1936 decider.
In all, Dhyan Chand played 12 Olympic matches, and scored an unbelievable 33 goals — just shy of scoring a hattrick each game!
Anecdotes and apocryphal stories
Many stories surrounding Dhyan Chand’s prowess with a hockey stick are difficult to confirm. Some are definitely apocryphal. It is said that once his sublime skill and close control of the ball aroused such suspicion that his stick was broken to see whether there was a magnet inside. One has to remember that the game was played on natural grass in those days in contrast to the astro turf now, and the surface would often be bumpy and uneven. This made ball control more difficult for lesser mortals.
During the 1936 Berlin Games, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler — a proponent of Aryan racial superiority — was so enamoured with Dhyan Chand’s play that he offered him German citizenship and the post of Colonel in his country’s Army, a proposition that the Indian ace is said to have promptly refused.
A shining light in Indian sports
Dhyan Chand played during India’s pre-independence years, a time when the local population was subjugated and made to feel inferior by the ruling British. This is what gave his achievements on the field even more importance for Indians. Seeing an Indian dominating Europeans in a sport invented by them evoked a lot of pride.
Moreover, for a long time, hockey was the only sport in which India consistently excelled at the international and Olympic stage. In fact, starting from Amsterdam 1928, India won seven of the eight hockey gold medals at the Games. Apart from K D Jadhav’s wrestling bronze at Helsinki 1952, India had to wait until Atlanta 1996 and tennis player Leander Paes for an Olympic medal in a sport other than hockey.
There were other great contemporary players like K D Singh ‘Babu’, Roop Singh, and Balbir Singh, but Dhyan Chand’s name was always taken first.
Recognition of his achievements
Apart from August 29 being celebrated as the National Sports Day, numerous awards and other honours are named after Dhyan Chand. In 2021, the Narendra Modi government renamed the erstwhile Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, India’s highest sporting honour, after Dhyan Chand. An award for lifetime achievement in sport was already named after him.
New Delhi’s National Stadium was renamed Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium in 2002.
Laurels
In honour of Dhyan Chand, his birthday August 29 is also celebrated as National Sports Day, when various sporting honours are bestowed upon athletes from India.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1956 by the Indian government for his splendid contribution to Indian hockey.
A profile
Ronojoy Sen | TNN
From the archives of The Times of India: 2008
FORGOTTEN OLYMPIANS
At the Berlin Olympics, the Indians, with Dhyan Chand carrying the flag, were by far the most colourfully dressed of the contingents on show. A member of the Indian team noted, “With our golden kullahs and light blue turbans, our contingent appeared as members of a marriage procession of some rich Hindu gentlemen, rather than competitors in the Olympic Games.” However, India caused a serious controversy by not offering the raised-arm salute to Hitler during the marchpast at the opening ceremony. The Indians were the only contingent, apart from the Americans, to not perform the salute as a mark of respect to the Nazi leader.
At the Games village, the Indians got to meet some famous Nazi personalities. Dhyan Chand has written, “One day we were in the dining hall, who should walk in but the burly Herman Goering, clad in his military attire! We were after him in a trice to get his autograph. Later some of us obtained Dr Goebbel’s autograph.”
India’s hockey supremacy was such that there were rumours in both Los Angeles and Berlin that the Indians were resorting to black magic. Speculation was rife that Indian forwards had worked magic on their sticks and were hiding the balls inside their turbans. The US captain’s comment in 1932 that for most of the game “they were chasing shadows” aptly summed up the nature of the encounter in which the Indians beat the Americans 24-1. Such prowess continued four years later in Berlin and finally an Indian player opened his turban to demonstrate to rival athletes that it was all skill and not a recourse to the supernatural that had won India three consecutive golds.
An idol and an angel
Dhyan Chand, instrumental in winning India golds at Amsterdam, LA and Berlin, was an idol in the hockey world of Europe. Germany held him dear, calling their best hockey player “the German Dhyan Chand”. At Prague a young lady insisted after a match on kissing India’s hockey wizard, a demand that made him extremely uncomfortable. “He is an angel,” she declared before kissing him.
