However, he went on to sound a note of caution, suggesting that the unpredictability of the weather could ruin the chances of an India–Pakistan final because the European teams were far better equipped to handle the heavy turf in comparison with teams from the subcontinent. ‘But there is one factor to be remembered—London’s unpredictable weather. This weekend has been wet and miserable and the forecast is for continued unsettled weather. This may be decisive in tipping the scales in favour of Great Britain—at present the strongest challenger the Indian and Pakistani teams have.’18
His analysis was based on India’s lacklustre performance against Spain. Playing in wet muddy conditions, the Indians had found that their stick work lacked the gloss it had on dry turf in earlier games. Especially for those without long stud boots, the soft turf made it impossible to control the ball. Most of them slipped on the wet ground and in the process their lightning speed of attack suffered.
Speaking of the Europeans, Hamilton mentioned that the wet conditions had not affected their game as much as it had the men from the subcontinent. ‘A heavier combination, relying more on team work than individual play and familiar with wet grounds, Great Britain may find that these conditions will suit them well.’19
That he was right was evident when the British outclassed the Pakistanis in their semi-final, booking a date with India in the final. India, on the other hand, played a scratchy game to beat the Dutch. The match report published in the Times of India was skeptical of India’s chances in the final. ‘India will meet Great Britain in the Olympic Hockey final on August 12 and unless the Indian players cut out their soft fancy stuff and adopt direct methods, India may find it difficult to retain the title…These two matches (semi-finals) proved two things clearly. First, English and Continental hockey has improved immensely and their game is based on entirely different strategy and technique. Second, Indians and Pakistanis must learn to play in heavy boots, which give a better foothold on heavy turf.’20 The report concluded with words of caution for the Indians on the eve of the final. ‘Finally, another thing was proved: namely, that to play against Britain a team must have sufficient vigour and stamina to last till the end. In today’s match India’s players were flat in the last ten minutes…’21
The stage was now set for a dream final: the defending champions from newly independent India taking on their former imperial masters who had avoided playing Olympic hockey as long as India remained a colony. That the Indians were aware of the symbolic significance of the challenge at hand was evident from a report filed by Alex Valentine in the Times of India of 12 August. He declared that the Indians had decided not to play any further practice matches but had started a two-day ‘armchair strategy’ session in preparation for the final. ‘The chief factor in Thursday’s final, readily recognized by both sides, will be the weather. The Indians want hot sunshine for the next two days, the Britons want rain, or at least no heat.’ That the weather had already tilted the balance in favour of the British was borne out when the groundsman in charge of the pitch declared in jest, ‘A heat wave between now and the final will not leave the pitch much harder than what it is now’.22
When it poured on the eve of the final on 11 August, most of the Indian players decided to take the field in studded boots instead of playing barefoot. Also, they were aware of the extra sporting connotations of the contest, a fact evident from the following statement by Balbir Singh Sr: ‘Britain had been Olympic hockey champions in the 1908 Games at London and in the 1920 Games at Antwerp. Once India made their entry in the 1928 Games at Amsterdam, they decided not to play. Britain never played an India XI as long as they remained our rulers. The 1948 Olympic hockey final was the first meeting between Britain and India’.23
The Indians were embroiled in yet another controversy when the organizers decided to hold the third place play-off between Holland and Pakistan before the final. The Indians perceived this as a deliberate attempt to favour the British. The ground, already soft because of rain, would be further damaged by the play-off, seriously impacting the skilled play of the Indians. A.C. Chatterjee, manager of the Indian team, summed up the discontent in the Indian camp: ‘This in itself is enough to cut our chances by at least fifty percent, but instead of giving the finalists the advantage of the best possible ground under the conditions, the organizers have allowed the comparatively unimportant third place match to go on first. I shudder to think what the ground will look like when we take the field.’24
Anthony S. De Mello, commenting on the improved performances of the Europeans in London, declared, ‘It seems to me that it is not at all too much to suggest that India’s example of polish and skill at hockey in earlier years had inspired these other countries to play the game better and better. If this is so—and I am sure that it is—it means that India, despite the brevity of her international sporting career, has had something of real value to give to the rest of the world’.25
Despite the odds stacked firmly against them in the final, the Indians won the battle in style, defeating the British 4–0. The overwhelming Indian superiority was borne out by the match report by Alex Valentine in the Times of India:
India won the 1948 Olympic Hockey Championship in decisive fashion at the Wembley Stadium tonight, defeating Great Britain by four goals to nil. India’s superiority was never in dispute. Despite the heavy, muddy turf and the light rain, which fell for considerable time during the game, the Indians outclassed the British team with their superb ball control, accurate passing and intelligent positional play. Long before half time it was evident that India should win comfortably. If England had had any other goalkeeper but Brodie, India might have doubled their score…(By the middle of the second half) Britain had resigned to the fact that they had lost the game. But they were determined not to lose it by a greater margin. Whatever energies they had left they put into their defence. As the minutes dragged to the closing whistle, it was apparent the Indians were not going to get through the wall of British defenders. Full time came with yet another Indian attack on the British goal—and the match closed as it had opened. Only now the Indians were four ahead.26
This British defeat, achieved on British soil, unleashed some of the wildest celebrations Indian hockey has ever known. To give a cricketing analogy, most Indians today remember the delightful Indian invasion at Lord’s after the victory at the 1983 World Cup. The images of those celebrations, beamed live on television, are now etched forever in India’s public memory. There were no live cameras to record the landmark hockey win in London for posterity but contemporary press reports note that the few thousand Indian spectators present were delirious. Amidst spectacular scenes of jubilation, the Indian high commissioner, V.K. Krishna Menon, ran on to the ground to join the celebrations. Reviled by Western—especially American—diplomats, even the stern Menon—‘the devil incarnate’, ‘Mephistopheles in a Saville Row suite’, ‘the old snake charmer’—who was to later ‘bore’ the United Nations with his marathon seven-and-a-half hour speech on Kashmir—let his hair down that day. As reminisced by Balbir Singh Sr:
After the victory, V.K. Krishna Menon, free India’s first high commissioner in London, came running to congratulate us. He joined us for a group photograph. Later, he also gave an official reception at India House, where a big gathering of sports lovers was present. The Olympics over, we went to the European mainland and visited France, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. This brief tour, a fortnight in duration, was more of a goodwill nature, and earned India a great deal of fame. None of us had visited Europe before, and we were thrilled by the sights we saw.27
On their return to India, a red carpet welcome was given to the team. The victory celebrations continued for several days and climaxed in Delhi where the President Rajendra Prasad and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru attended an exhibition match involving the Olympic team in a jam-packed National Stadium.28 The victorious team of 1952 was to receive a similar grand welcome but in terms of its significance, the London hockey victory would no
t get a worthy rival until the national hysteria that overtook India when Ajit Wadekar’s cricketers beat England in England in 1971. This was the true measure of what the hockey players had achieved a year after independence. The legacy of colonialism clearly mattered deeply.
If sport is in fact a metaphor (and in some cases a metonym) for war, then hockey had proved to be India’s most trusted weapon in the troubled years after partition. In the complex post-independence context, prowess in sport wasn’t enough. Accomplishments had to be demonstrated in contests against the colonizers, which would mark a symbolic victory against the erstwhile colonial state and satisfy the insatiable national thrust for equality and revenge. To substantiate the point: even when India won gold medals in field hockey in the Olympic Games in 1928–36, hockey could never outrank cricket or soccer in colonial India. This is because Britain refused to participate in Olympic hockey contests in these years, knowing that the Indians were favourites to win the gold. This is especially interesting because Britain had won the Olympic gold in field hockey in 1904 and 1920, the only years when hockey was played before 1928 and years when India did not participate. Absence of competitions against the colonizer, it can be argued, had relegated hockey in the Indian sporting hierarchy. When the Indians had finally trounced the British in 1948, winning the Olympic gold medal in the process, there was no disputing the fact that hockey had consolidated its position as India’s national sport.
INDIA GOES TO FINLAND: HELSINKI 1952
At Helsinki, the competition wasn’t stiff enough to challenge the Indians. However, the internal discussions that marked Indian sport were gradually becoming apparent in hockey too. Even as the Olympic team was being finalized on 13 June 1952, power-hungry administrators were engaged in mini-battles of intrigue to push their ‘favourites’ into the team at the last minute. The Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal associations were seeking the inclusion of an additional player and unhealthy parochialism was evident in their choices. As the Times of India reported, ‘The effort to push Malhotra back into the team, who was originally selected and then dropped in favour of Jaswant and Gurung, smacked of provincialism’.29
Even more worrisome was what followed. Telegrams were sent from Bombay to all the affiliated associations, requesting their consent to the inclusion of Malhotra from Uttar Pradesh as an additional half. The telegram mentioned that Captain Digvijay Singh Babu and coaches Habul Mukherjee and Harbail Singh had stressed the need for Malhotra, especially in the event of an India–Pakistan final. ‘The latter portion of the plea struck several associations as very odd. They failed to understand how a player could be indispensable only for one game and could not be required for others.’30
With Uttar Pradesh making a case for Malhotra, Bengal wasn’t to be left behind. Soon after the first telegram had been sent from Bombay, a second telegram was sent from Calcutta. The contents of this telegram make fascinating reading: ‘As there are five halves already in the team the eighteenth player should be a forward and Bengal would be prepared to pay the expenses of C S Gurung, if selected’.31 Anticipating criticism, the telegram added that Gurung should be selected not because he was from Bengal but because he had performed well throughout the season. The Times of India made the following comment: ‘The state of affairs is very illuminating and depressing, as these attempts to wangle in players come just on the eve of the team’s departure. It may be mentioned that in 1948 also a similar selection of some Bengal players at a late hour had been allowed on the same condition—expenses borne by the Bengal Association’.32
An interesting feature of Indian hockey at this time, evident from attempts to thrust players into the national team by agreeing to pay for their passage, was the poor financial state of the sport. The financial crisis was aggravated when the government decided to further reduce the subsidy offered to the nation’s premier Olympic sport. The financial condition of the Indian Olympic Association too was dire and it wasn’t sure if it had the funds to send all, or even most, of the selected Indian athletes to Helsinki. This was evident from a circular issued by the IOA to the secretaries of the affiliated national federations in which it declared many athletes to be ‘doubtful starters’ owing to a lack of funds. The circular also declared that the financial condition was alarming and added that the government of India had reduced its grant-in-aid from Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 70,000. State governments too weren’t as forthcoming as in 1948 and some had removed sport from their immediate radar in favour of other, more pressing concerns. As the Times of India reported, ‘This has resulted in a large gap between expected income and anticipated expenditure’.33
Despite hardship, the IOA finally managed to send the hockey team to Copenhagen, allowing them to acclimatize to the Scandinavian weather. Finally, the Indians started their title defence, defeating the Austrians 4–0. The performance, however, was at best scratchy and it was widely reported that the Indians had lost the edge which had won them four consecutive Olympic gold medals. ‘The Champions won, as they were expected to, but they found the Austrians no easy obstacle on a pitch rendered slippery by rain.’34 The sense of unease within the Indian camp was epitomized by the statements of Pankaj Gupta on the eve of the semi-final against the British. ‘I want you boys to play your normal game; first-time clearances, short-passing and nippy thrusts. You know it too well, that’s your natural style. No showmanship, mind you.’35
In their semi-final against the British, the Indians were a transformed side. This is how Balbir Singh Sr, who scored a hat-trick, his second in Olympic hockey, described the performance against Britain: ‘We were a completely changed lot in the semi-final against Britain. We moved swiftly and smoothly and scythed their defence with copy-book moves…It was an accident that I got that goal. But I scored two more before the interval to get my second hat-trick in Olympic hockey—my first was in my maiden appearance in the London Olympics. Britain reduced the margin (1–3), but that was all they could do. India had reached the final’.36
Even after a better Indian showing in the semi-final, the final against Holland was expected to be a close affair. This was because of two reasons. First, the rains had made the ground wet and slippery, conditions that were expected to favour the Dutch more than the Indians. Second, the Indians looked to be over reliant on Balbir Singh Sr, a point repeatedly emphasized by the Times of India: ‘The Indians need to visit the practice grounds regularly to remedy defects in their forward line, for it is too much to expect Punjab’s twenty-eight-year-old centre forward Balbir Singh to initiate and execute all his side’s attacks’.37
These predictions weren’t accurate as the Indians retained the title fairly convincingly, defeating Holland 6–1 in the final. Balbir Singh Sr was once again the star, scoring his third Olympic hat-trick in style and scoring 9 out of the 13 Indian goals at Helsinki. In his own words, ‘I was in my element that day and scored five of my team’s six goals. The match gave me another hat-trick, my third in Olympic hockey. Holland got a consolation goal, but overall it was a one-sided final’.38
On arriving home in India, the team was accorded a royal reception in the capital. If anything, the number of functions far exceeded those in 1948 and the celebrations continued for nearly a month. At the official function in Delhi, the Olympic team played a match against a Rest of India XI in a packed stadium. Present in the audience were President Rajendra Prasad and Prime Minister Nehru.
That the players were overwhelmed by the response in India is evident from the recollections of Balbir Singh:
The train in which we traveled was literally mobbed by enthusiastic hockey fans. People surged around our compartment and waited for our darshan. When we emerged from the train, they almost crushed us with bear hugs and shows of affection. We endured it all with a smile. The four Punjab Police players—Dharam, Udham, Raghbir and I—were taken in open jeeps in a huge procession in Jalandhar. Thousands of people lined the streets and cheered us from treetops and housetops. We were showered with small gifts, baskets of fruit and sweets
and garlands—these constituted the people’s simple way of showing their gratefulness.39
Balbir Singh had emerged a worthy successor to the mantle that Dhyan Chand had left behind.
WINNING BY A ‘SHORT WHISKER’: MELBOURNE 1956
The Indian dominance was to continue in Melbourne where India was to win its sixth consecutive gold medal. But already those in charge of Indian hockey were worried about the warning signs that emerged in the Games. As Pankaj Gupta noted soon after the win:
Yes, India maintained her supremacy in world hockey at Melbourne by a short whisker and this, I say, must make us pause. We can no longer take anything for granted. The standard of world hockey has improved and other nations like Holland, England, Germany and Pakistan have caught up with India in technique as well as in standard. Complacency must give way to genuine concern. We have an unparalleled wealth of hockey talent, which I regretfully consider, is not being fully exploited.40
As is evident from the above words, the Indians were aware that Melbourne 1956 was a far tougher assignment compared to Helsinki 1952. This may have prompted them to appoint Balbir Singh Sr, the nation’s leading star, as captain. Under him, now an Olympic veteran and twice gold-medal winner, India started in style, humbling the Afghans 14–0 in their opening engagement at Melbourne Olympic Park. Strangely, even this high margin of victory failed to satisfy the Indian scribes covering the tournament. Following the victory, the Hindu reported, ‘It was one way traffic throughout but if we were represented by our 1932 or 1936 teams, we may have registered a cricket score.’41 This comment also brings to the fore the kind of aura around Dhyan Chand and his teammates and demonstrates the pressure the Indian team was under, to stand up to its glorious past.
Olympics-The India Story Page 14
