Name: Dhyan Singh, known as Dhyan Chand
Born: 29 August 1905, Allahabad
Died: 3 December 1979, New Delhi
Sport: Hockey
Early life and the army
Dhyan Singh was born in Allahabad on 29 August 1905. His father, Sameshwar Dutt Singh, served as a subedar in the army, and one of his brothers, Roop Singh, also went on to play hockey for India. Dhyan Chand himself enlisted in the British Indian Army in 1922, at the age of 16, joining as a sepoy, and learned his hockey on army teams rather than through any organised coaching. Army hockey was played to a high standard between regiments, and it was there that his skills first drew wider notice. He rose steadily through the ranks over the following two decades, from lance naik in 1927 to naik, then to the Viceroy’s Commissioned rank of jemadar in 1938 and acting subedar in 1942, before being commissioned as an officer in 1943. He became known across India as Major Dhyan Chand, the rank generally credited to him by the time he retired from the army in 1956.
Three Olympic golds
Dhyan Chand played international hockey for India from 1926 to 1949 and, by his own count in his autobiography, scored 570 goals in 185 matches for the country, with several hundred more added in domestic and army fixtures. He was the leading scorer at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, hockey’s first appearance at the Games, with 14 goals in five matches as India won gold without conceding a single goal. A story from that tournament, repeated in most accounts of his career, holds that Dutch officials became suspicious of the accuracy of his stick-work and had one of his hockey sticks broken open to check for a hidden magnet; nothing was found, and he continued playing.
At the 1932 Los Angeles Games he scored eight of India’s 24 goals in a 24-1 win over the United States in the final, still the largest winning margin in Olympic hockey history, and at the 1936 Berlin Olympics he scored three in an 8-1 win over the host nation in the final. Adolf Hitler is said to have watched that final and afterwards offered Dhyan Chand German citizenship and the rank of colonel in the German army; the story lacks independent documentary confirmation, but it has become part of the standard account of his career, and what is certain is that he turned down any such approach and returned to India. Across the three Olympic Games Dhyan Chand scored 37 goals in 12 matches, all of them in gold-medal-winning campaigns.
Touring feats and later career
His scoring was not confined to the Olympics. On India’s 1935 tour of New Zealand he scored 201 goals in 23 matches, and he was still among the most feared forwards in the game well into his forties, scoring 61 goals in 22 matches on a 1947 tour of East Africa, two years before he retired from international hockey. After leaving the army in 1956 he taught at coaching camps in Mount Abu, Rajasthan, before serving as chief hockey coach at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala from 1961 to 1969. In 1952 he had published his autobiography, “Goal! Autobiography of Hockey Wizard Dhyan Chand”, through Sport & Pastime in Chennai. His son, Ashok Dhyan Chand, went on to play hockey for India himself. Dhyan Chand died of liver cancer in New Delhi on 3 December 1979.
Legacy
India’s National Sports Day is marked on 29 August, his birthday, and the National Stadium in Delhi was renamed after him in 2002. In 2021 the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India’s highest sporting honour, was itself renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. He was nominated for the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, in 2014, but the honour went instead to the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the scientist C. N. R. Rao. His family expressed disappointment at being passed over, and a Right to Information filing later suggested the Prime Minister’s Office had not followed the sports ministry’s own recommendation. He has not received the award to date.
Achievements and awards
Three Olympic gold medals, in 1928, 1932 and 1936, finishing as the tournament’s leading scorer in 1928; Padma Bhushan (1956); the National Stadium in Delhi renamed the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium (2002); National Sports Day observed on his birthday since 2012; India’s highest sporting honour renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award (2021).
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
