Goal-scoring machine par excellence, Balbir Singh Senior's legacy is secure in pantheon of India's hockey greats

Sundeep Misra


Balbir Singh Sr led India to their third consecutive Olympic gold medal post-independence in the 1956 Games. Image credit: Twitter/@sachin_rt

In the period between 1928 and 1956, all of 28 years, the rest of the hockey world chased shadows on grass. India played exquisite hockey - inhabiting a rarefied atmosphere of finesse, skill, deftness, and guile. It was a world where wrists rolled, the shoulder dipped in one direction, the body the other way; the ball a gurgling sphere of leather, in love with the curve of the Indian stick as it caressed, nipped, pushed and flicked it past the opponents, the fans looking on in delight and amazement. Against the rough, hard, hit-and-run of the Europeans, the Indians were magical, a team of wizards who could conjure tricks where none existed.