The pre-1960 Indian hockey team was the greatest ever Indian team in any sport

Discussions on Indian hockey often feature reminiscences of past glories from a bygone era, of what it used to be like. The notion of India’s past glory in the sport has been handed down from one generation to the next — but how great were they?

How does the pre-1964 hockey team feature when pitted against the greatest sporting teams of all time?

The Dhyan Chand era

Since there was no hockey World Cup until 1971, the Olympics were accepted as the highest level of competition in field hockey, as the sport is referred to at Games.

Field hockey was introduced to the Olympics in London 1908 and played Antwerp 1920 (but not in Stockholm 1912 or Paris 1924). Having won the gold medal in both 1908 and 1920, Great Britain were favourites for Amsterdam 1928.

However, there was a catch: 1928 featured India for the first time. En route to Amsterdam, India halted in England for 11 practice matches: they won nine, drew one, and lost one. The most famous of these wins was in Folkestone, a 4-0 triumph against a Hockey Association XI that featured nine British national players.

Shortly afterwards, Great Britain withdrew their hockey team from the Olympics. In fact, they did not reappear until 1948: by then, India had become Independent.

This obviously led to speculations that the British were not comfortable with the idea of losing to a colony. Dhyan Chand, the man British press were hailing as the "human eel", certainly agreed in Goal! (1952, Sport and Pastime), his autobiography: “After the Folkestone defeat, tongues wagged and said that England was scared of losing to us and, hence, withdrew from the event.”

In Amsterdam, India played five matches, all of them against European nations. They did not merely win every match: they annihilated Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, and in the final, the Netherlands.

India scored 29 goals — Dhyan Chand 15 on his own — and conceded none. There was no Great Britain, but India had annihilated five major European sides.

Expectations were obviously high ahead of Los Angeles 1932 — but now came a new hurdle: cash. Travel to the US was more expensive. To add to that, this was an era when India’s struggle for Independence was approaching its peak. Finances were hard to come by.

No stone was left unturned. The Indian royalty, extremely generous when it came to spending on cricket, were not interested. When the Indian Hockey Federation approached Mahatma Gandhi for help, all he got was a question: “What is hockey?”

The IHF secured a loan from the Punjab National Bank, but it was not enough. So, they were forced to impose certain conditions on the players. The players would not get their £2 weekly allowances once they left Los Angeles. They would also have to play matches on their way to the Games and back to make up for the shortfall.

The team played in India, Ceylon, and Japan en route to Los Angeles. There were only three teams at the Olympics. India first beat Japan 11-1 in a match so one-sided that the local press suggested the Indians played left-handed against the home team…or, perhaps, play in snow boots?

None of that happened, and India duly thrashed the US 24-1 — still the highest margin in the history of the Games — to win their second gold medal. Dhyan Chand scored 12 of India’s 35 goals and his brother Roop Singh 13 (including 10 against the US).

Now they played on their way back home, throughout the length and breadth of the US. A match against a United States XI in Philadelphia was so one-sided that India lent them their reserve goalkeeper, Arthur Hind, for the second half — and still won 20-1. They then played against national teams in Europe, then in Ceylon and India. In all, India played 37 matches: they scored 338 goals and conceded 34.

Dhyan Chand alone got 133 of these, but… he was not happy. If anything, he could not “explain why and how the lone goal was scored against us,” after India beat Japan 11-1 or beating Hungary by “only five goals”.

It was no different in Berlin four years later. Five matches, five wins, 38 goals (Dhyan Chand, 14, including four in each of the semi-final and the final). Germany got the lone goal against India at the Games, in the final — but that was sandwiched between two separate four-goal bursts from India.

Across three editions India had thus played, it won all 12 matches. They scored 102 goals (over eight a match), but only three were scored against them.

The run continues

The Partition in 1947 resulted in an estimated death of up to two million and the displacement of many times more than that. The impact on Indian sport, while insignificant when pitted against the greater picture, was considerable. Yet, less than a year after Independence, India and Pakistan both featured in the London Olympics of 1948: both teams stormed into the semi-finals without losing a match.

There, India beat the Netherlands, while Pakistan went down against Great Britain. In the final, India thrashed the hosts 4-0.

Team India wins Gold at the 1948 Olympics. (Photo: Twitter)

A 12-year gap and Partition, nothing could affect India’s supreme dominance. Yet again they did the hat-trick, winning the gold medal in Helsinki 1952 and Melbourne 1956. In the latter, they repeated their record from 1928 of not conceding a goal — while they scored 38 themselves.

They continued to steamroll oppositions in Rome 1960 as well, winning all three matches, then the quarter-final and the semi-final. Then, in the final, the unthinkable happened: India lost to arch-rivals Pakistan, by a goal.

Until then, across 32 years, India had played 29 matches Olympics and won every single one of them: they had scored 196 goals and conceded eight. Their streak of six gold medals finally ended in silver.

There is little doubt that this was the strongest Indian team of all time in any sport. In fact, they dominated for so long that one may question the logic of calling them "one" team.

The last good days

India’s golden run was not over, either: despite being held to draws by Germany and Spain, India reclaimed gold in Tokyo 1964, avenging Pakistan in the final. In Mexico City 1968, they failed to make it to the final for the first time but still won bronze — as they did in Munich 1972.

Even that did not happen in Montreal 1976, where for the first time, hockey switched from grass to AstroTurf. They failed to go beyond the first round following defeats against the Netherlands and Australia.

In between, the focus had begun to shift towards the World Cup. India finished third in 1971 and runners-up in 1973 before a stunning run in Kuala Lumpur 1975, where they beat Pakistan in the final to win. India won the gold medal in Moscow Olympics of 1980 (unbeaten, too), but that was after nine teams withdrew following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Since 1980, India neither won an Olympics medal nor made it to the top four at the World Cup — until last year’s bronze in Tokyo.

There was a time when Indian hockey used to rule the world. The recent resurgence, particularly a medal at the Olympics, has made many fans dream ahead of the 2023 World Cup.