The high margin of victory was, however, soured by an injury to Balbir Singh, who broke a finger and was out of action for the next few games. With India heavily reliant on his outstanding scoring abilities, this was looked upon as a major blow to its chances of retaining the gold.42 But even without Balbir in their ranks, the Indians bulldozed their way past the US 16–043 and beat Singapore 6–0. The match against Singapore, however, brought out some of the weaknesses that were to hamper India’s chances in the semi-final against Germany. Without Balbir in the team and with the Singaporeans resorting to ultra-defensive tactics, the Indians found it extremely hard to score. Not until the 23rd minute of the game were the Indians able to break the deadlock, a first for Indian hockey in the Olympics.44 Though the Indians were all over their opponents in the second half and ended the group with the total tally of 36 goals in favour with none against, critics were sceptical of India’s chances in the semi-final against Germany, a chain of thought best summed up by Pankaj Gupta:
I happened to be at Melbourne, where there were occasions when I felt most uneasy at watching our hockey team in action. Our earlier matches against Afghanistan, USA and Singapore were no criterion but our main hurdles were Germany in the semi-final and Pakistan in the final. Our victories over Germany and Pakistan were both lucky and unimpressive.45
That India’s victory against Germany hadn’t done much to silence critics is apparent from the critical tone of the report in the Hindu:
The stock of hockey in the Indian sub-continent went down at the main stadium of the MCC cricket ground today when both India, reigning Olympic champions since 1928, and Pakistan qualified for the final beating Germany 1–0 and Great Britain 3–2 respectively. India’s nine-man selection committee must seriously consider their next step in selecting India’s national team in future. Never before in India’s Olympic history has any nation provided such stiff opposition to India. Something has gone wrong somewhere, otherwise how we could win by the narrowest margin in the game in which we had been world beaters is difficult to appreciate…46
‘Victory Casts Its Own Spell’:
The First India–Pakistan Face-off
That the final in Melbourne was India’s first meeting against Pakistan on the Olympic stage was weighing on the minds of players from both teams. The Indians were under intense pressure on the eve of the final, a state of affairs palpable in the reminiscences of Balbir Singh Sr:
I could not sleep that night (on the eve of the final), and after tossing about restlessly for a while, I went out for a stroll. It was quite late in the night when someone called out my name. Turning, I saw Ashwini Kumar, his face creased with worry. Ashwini put his arm around my shoulder and guided me to my room. He talked cheerfully, gave me a tablet, made me lie down, and sat next to me.47
The tension was greater for the Indians because they had more to lose than Pakistan had to gain. For Pakistan, a silver medal would be a triumph, whereas for India anything but gold would be a disappointment. This explains the unrivalled scenes of jubilation following India’s narrow 1–0 victory in the final. The celebrations were more in relief than anything else. India, despite all criticism, had managed to retain her crown. As Balbir Singh Sr said:
Victory casts its own spell; every nation rejoices in it, and we were no exception. There were the usual rounds of celebrations and hugging and kissing among players and officials. We were feted and felicitated and hunted down for autographs. I had been through this remarkable experience at London and Helsinki. But Melbourne was different. Our supporters, hundreds of them Australians and New Zealanders, were flushed with the thrill that India had beaten Pakistan in the Olympic final. Several hundred of enthusiastic friends we made on our 1955 New Zealand tour met us again in Melbourne. They were among our most vociferous fans…That day when I led my team out to the victory rostrum, I swelled with pride. Sharing the rostrum on either side of me were the captains of Pakistan and Germany, the silver and the bronze medal winners. The crowd cheered us. It was a thrilling experience to acknowledge their applause. The National Anthem sounded sweet, and the tricolour, fluttering proudly in the stiff breeze, looked a grand sight.48
The celebrations, however, failed to conceal the fact that in Melbourne the Indians had lost more than they had gained. It was visible to all that India’s supremacy was now a thing of the past and unless the Indians improved their game by a few notches, it was only a matter of time before they were humbled by the Pakistanis or the Europeans led by the Germans and the Dutch.
Pankaj Gupta tried to sum up the grim situation:
I am going to stick my neck right out by saying that morally we lost the final against Pakistan whom we managed to beat by one goal thanks to a penalty conversion by Gentle. It was an even game up to a point but then Pakistan were all over us. Even before Gentle had scored the all important goal, shortly before the interval, Pakistan were awarded a penalty bully and according to my interpretation of the rules it should have been a goal but fortunately for us the Australian umpire ignored the infringement by Amir Kumar and we breathed again. If they had been a goal up things might have been a lot different.49
In another article Gupta attempted to explain the reasons behind the decline:
The supremacy of a country in any game depends a lot on those who play the game, those who manage it and those who govern the country. We have indeed players of a caliber who can still hold their own in the international arena despite the fact that other nations have lately emerged as opponents truly worthy of our steel…We have a great responsibility on our shoulders and we must see that the game does not suffer because of parochial interest, personal sentiment or administrative interference at Governmental level… We have wonderful players and if the right team and right skipper and manager are chosen there is no reason why we should not continue to remain world champions for a long time.50
His last statement summed up the dangers that were eating into the foundations of Indian hockey. The words ‘right skipper and right manager’ smacked of the very provincialism that was corrupting Indian hockey and it was time the game was given a reality check. Rome 1960 was the occasion when this finally happened.
‘DEBACLE’: ROME 1960
From the very start, India’s campaign at Rome appeared jinxed. Almost all its victories were by narrow margins and on more than a couple of occasions it was plain lucky. Though the Indians started well, winning the opening match 10–0 against Denmark, the performance was far from satisfactory. Following this victory, the Hindu reported that the Indian forwards were yet to show thrust or combination and if Prithpal Singh had not given them a three-goal lead within the first 15 minutes, things might have been difficult, although Denmark was no match for India.51 In the quarter-final against Australia, India won by the narrowest of margins, 1–0, the winning goal scored at the last minute of the second extra period. Throughout the match the Indians missed easy openings and as recorded by Pankaj Gupta, ‘This match does not reflect credit to the world champions and I consider it a providential escape in this match’.52 Against New Zealand and Holland too the Indians were scratchy and only Bhola among the forwards and Prithpal by virtue of his penalty corner conversion did justice to their pre-tournament billing.
Against Holland, for the first time in Olympic history, the Indians were down a goal for most of the first half. The match was in fact tied one apiece until the last seven minutes, when the Indians scored three quick goals. To Holland’s credit, they had the better of the exchanges in the initial minutes and defended stubbornly in the beginning of the second half when the Indians went on an all-out attack.53 Even in the semi-final against Britain, the Indians were seen defending for most of the first half and when the British stepped up the pressure at the start of the second half, looking for the equalizer, it was only goalkeeper Laxman’s brilliance that saved India the blushes. He saved four strikes from Mayes and Hindle and with Prithpal Singh playing a great game at the back, India scraped through to the final.54
In the final, India could never assume ascendancy, as was expected from the world champions. In front of the biggest crowd ever assembled for a hockey match, one which was telecast throughout Western Europe via the Euro vision link up, the Pakistanis had the best of a final which never reached the expected high standards because of the poor ground conditions. Both sides were under intense pressure to win and the Indians lost the plot more than the Pakistanis, losing their Olympic title in the process. At the interval, Pakistan was up by a goal, scored by Naseer in the eleventh minute of the match. Even when the Indians pressed for the equalizer towards the close of play, they failed to create any significant opening. With five minutes to go, the Pakistanis resorted to time-wasting tactics by hitting the ball out of play at every opportunity. The fairly large Indian section of the crowd jeered such conduct but it enabled Pakistan to hold on to their important one-goal lead.55
As soon as the match ended, the Pakistanis went berserk. Their players were seen running right across the pitch, embracing and shaking hands with each other and the Pakistani fans celebrated way into the night. It was the first time in Olympic history that the Indian hockey team had been pushed to number two on the podium and Pakistan cherished its moment of glory.
As we have seen, the signs of India’s impending decline had been evident since the early 1950s. Through it all, India was still winning. This defeat, that too at the hands of Pakistan, meant that Rome was seen as nothing short of a ‘debacle’ in the annals of Indian hockey.56 The pages of IOC’s official magazine during this period are full of heart-rending post-mortems and prescriptions for the regaining of lost glory. Two things stand out in this collective chest-beating after the defeat: one, blame was heaped upon the political rivalries of regional sporting satraps, which were supposed to have damaged Indian hockey and two, the debate between ‘robust’ (European style) and ‘skilful’ (Indian) hockey.57 By the 1980s, most contemporary commentators would date the decline of Indian hockey to the rise of astro-turf and the Indian failure to adapt to a more physically demanding form of the game. The records indicate, however, that this debate between the ‘Indian’ and ‘the Western’ form of the game far predated astro-turf. Thus S.M. Sait emphatically declared in 1962 that ‘we have to concede that that our standard of hockey has deteriorated’. In his view, the Indians had erred in adopting foreign tactics:
It is very strange that our players instead of continuing to play the old type of scientific and skilful hockey have made the mistake to take up hard-hitting type of hockey which was almost alien to us. It was a delight in the past to watch our forwards indulge in quick short passing and skilful dribbling… Now what we saw in Rome was a different picture altogether. Our players were trying to outdo our opponents in hard hitting and individual thrusts. It is needless to say that we failed miserably.58
It is telling that what Western commentators had long recorded as typical examples of ‘magical’ Indian stick work was seen by Indian commentators as ‘scientific’ hockey. Now it was felt that India’s players were losing out in a bid to imitate the Western players.
But perhaps the deeper malaise was that of provincial rivalry, on which blame was attributed by all who worked closely with Indian hockey after the 1950s. No one explained this better than Charanjit Rai, who in a prescient article in Indian Olympic News noted that the loudest voices of recrimination after the Rome defeat came not from former players but from ‘those who had never achieved this distinction’ and held positions of power at the state and national level in hockey’s administrative structure.59 In an early precursor of Dhanraj Pillai’s famous lament in the early years of the 21st century against the czars of Indian hockey, Rai argued that the players would be affected ‘unless treated fairly and sympathetically’ off the field. Not mincing words about the politics of player selection that had already begun to haunt the game, Rai argued that the only way to regain the title at Tokyo was to ‘select the team purely on merit…Even when ten players have been selected purely on merit and one position has been filled in with an undeserving player, this injustice has an adverse effect on the other ten. They may not express their resentment but subconsciously it finds it outlet adversely affecting their performance on the field’.60 Rai’s analysis carried hints of ‘injustices’ done and ‘undeserving’ players wrongly promoted. Whatever the truth of this assertion, the fact that such talk was already becoming part of the public discourse about hockey is significant. He had touched upon the malaise that was creeping into Indian hockey and one that continues to haunt it to the present day.
‘SWEET REVENGE’: TOKYO 1964
The defeat to Pakistan had a deep impact on Indian hockey and the next four years were spent in plotting how to regain the title. As the Indians were about to embark on their journey of revenge, the sports media back home was optimistic about its chances of wresting the crown back from Pakistan at Tokyo. At the same time, scribes suggested that if the team did manage to win, it would have performed a much greater task compared to the stalwarts of the golden age of Indian hockey. This was because in the 1930s and 1940s India had the best players in every position and there was hardly any serious competition to post a significant challenge to its supremacy. However, by the 1950s, hockey had established firm roots in Europe and also South East Asia and there was no question of an easy victory for either India or Pakistan.61
As far as preparations were concerned, the Indians did their best before Tokyo. The players came together for an intensive training session at a pre-Olympic camp and also toured New Zealand and Malaysia as part of their Olympic planning. Also, there didn’t appear to be any major dissensions within the team, and regionalism had not yet afflicted the Olympic preparations in the way it had in the lead-up to London, Helsinki or Melbourne.
However, India did have her task cut out at Tokyo partly because some of its own players had helped train the Europeans and South East Asians. Former Indian greats like Penniger, Cullen, Gentle, Kishen Lal and Carr had accepted professional assignments in nations across the world. With the Indian diaspora gradually spreading its wings, many Indians who could have donned India colours had gone abroad to strengthen the teams of countries they settled in.62 Finally, the Indians had also somewhat modified their earlier style of play and had resorted to power hockey, depending more on short corner and long corner conversions than field goals, allowing the Europeans the opportunity to catch up.
That the gap had indeed narrowed was evident in the first match itself when the Indians struggled to beat Belgium in a hard fought encounter.63 Things were even more difficult in the second engagement against Germany as the Indians struggled to hold the Germans to a 1–1 draw. They were shocked when the Germans took the lead in the 20th minute and it appeared at one point that the match was beyond India. Finally, they managed to save the day via a penalty corner conversion by Prithipal Singh. Things barely improved in the match against Spain: the Indians were once again held to a one-all draw. The Indian scribes were acutely disappointed at the performance, manifest from the match report in the Hindu: ‘Gone are the days when hockey fans all over the world were only concerned with the margins of India’s victory. Today it has become a matter of survival and at the moment India is finding it difficult even to qualify for the semi-final…India is now occupying the third place in Pool B with Germany and Spain taking the first two places respectively. While Germany has five points, Spain and India have four each with Spain having the better goal average’.64
Another factor that hadn’t endeared the Indians to experts was their rough approach. Willic, a former German star, summed up the rising discontent against the Indian style of play:
I have never known India playing the man instead of the ball and at this rate nobody will have any respect for India. What is more, the entire ground of Indian officials were mum and blind over this. You taught us and the world how to play, but now it is you who have forgotten how to play. From a player’s point of view and now as a coach I appeal to you to put an end to thi
s state of affairs.65
Eventually, India managed to scrape through to the semi-final with a 2–1 win against Holland. T.D. Parthasarathy in his match report drew attention to what could have been a real tragedy:
Making the semi-final grade was a real ordeal for India who had to thank providence that it managed to beat the Netherlands by the odd goal in three…India was lucky to win because after Netherlands had leveled matters, the latter all but got the lead. The goal was, however, disallowed…In the 20th minute the Dutchmen forced a short corner and following a melee in front of India’s goal, the Netherlands inside left Van Hooft took everybody by surprise by scoring. This created a sensation among the Netherlands followers. The Dutch players threw their sticks up in the air in jubilation, but to the surprise of all, including many in the Indian camp the British umpire Kendrick Eaves disallowed the goal for offside. The decision came as a rude shock to the Netherlands, who seemed unable to recover from this.66
In the semi-final against Australia, the Indians fared better, winning the contest 3–1 and as Parthasarathy said, ‘All said and done the victory was well deserved, and fighting back to the wall, the Indian team did a grand job’.67
Olympics-The India Story Page 15
