National Sports Day: An encounter with the Fuhrer and other tales from Dhyan Chand’s magical career

It was on his birthday in 1922, that a quiet, sinewy 17-year-old lad from Allahabad joined the Indian Army to serve the British Empire as a sepoy. Dhyan Singh didn’t have any great plans as such, it was a natural course of things. His father, already enlisted, was transferred from place to place at the Imperial army’s discretion, giving young Dhyan no scope of a formal childhood or education as he was towed along from town to town. He simply followed suit, happy to have a safe job in times of tumultuous change.

It was around this time that young Dhyan first picked up a hockey stick. Wrestling was his sport of choice until then, but something about the game summoned him once he had access to an open field. He began practicing after his duty hours were done, patiently waiting for the moon to rise every evening as the ground he had access to did not have any lighting. His fellow colleagues began calling him “Chand” (moon in Hindi), he who practiced by moonlight.

Dhyan Chand plied his trade for the army teams in his early years. It was a low key time, although it was unmistakable to those that watched him that he was born with blessed hands and a mind that could map the field like a chess player sees a board. Selected to play for India in the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam as part of an Anglo-Indian team with an Oxford-educated captain, Dhyan gave the world a sign of things to come by scoring 14 of India’s 29 unanswered goals in just 5 games in the tournament, on route to helping India capture its first ever Olympic gold.

A Dutch journalist, spellbound by his wizardry, remarked thus; “With Dhyan Chand, the ball seems ignorant of the law of gravity. The tanned, diabolical juggler stares at the ball intently; it gets upright and remains suspended in the air. It only proceeds on its way when the player has bestowed an approval nod on it”. Dhyan Chand was named player of the tournament, and the legend was born.

The Magical Mystery tour of 1932

Following their breakthrough in 1928, one would assume that defending the medal at the next Olympics in Los Angeles was a given. But 4 years is a long time in Indian sport at the best of times, and these were the worst of times. The great depression had burnt a great big hole on budgets, and the nascent Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) was severely cash strapped to send a large team across the globe. To their credit, the president AM Hayman left no stone unturned to try and find a sponsor, even approaching the Indian royals with hat in hand.

But India had just made its debut in cricket that very same year, and as a sign of things to come, the game soon captured the attention and patronage of the Nawabs more than hockey. The IHF finally managed to swing a deal with the Punjab National Bank to sponsor the tour, but with an enormous list of preconditions. News of India’s wizardly hockey skills had by now spread far and wide, and a gigantic tour before and after the Olympics was penciled in to help recover the money spent on sponsoring the team.

The team was scheduled to play 37 matches on the way to the Olympics and on its way back via Europe, with the itinerary kept open to accommodate more requests. Thus started probably the greatest goal glut witnessed in any sport. The team disembarked in Ceylon and Japan en route their 42-day voyage, winning 21-0 and 10-0 in Ceylon; and 22-0, 16-0, 5-3, and 11-0 in Japan. In the LA Olympics, India thrashed Japan 11-1 and the USA 24-1 as they stormed to their second consecutive Olympic gold.

But the US tour was far from over. They took the long train journey to the East Coast. At Philadelphia, a near-strength USA had it so bad that they asked Indian reserve goalkeeper Arthur Hind to stand for them in the second half. India still won 20-1.

Once in Europe, they had to play nine matches in a fortnight, including full-fledged internationals against Netherlands, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. They came through undefeated. After reaching Colombo, the fatigued squad won 8 of their remaining 10 matches in Ceylon and India, and drew 2. India played 37 matches in all on their global road trip, scoring 338 goals at 9.1 goals a match. Dhyan Chand scored 133 times, despite not playing all the games.

An encounter with the Führer

By the time the 1936 Olympics came around in Berlin, war drums were sounding across Europe. Dhyan Chand was by now captain of India, and the best player in history by a fair distance. But that really didn’t matter much to Dhyan Chand’s regiment, which was engaged in a fight with the tribals in Waziristan. He was refused permission to go, and it took high level intervention to secure his passage. India stormed through the table once again, registering wins of 4-1, 7-1, 9-0 and 10-0 in its first four games, before they faced off against the Germans on their home turf, with Adolf Hitler in attendance.

After a relatively quiet first half, the Indians turned it on in the second, scoring seven goals in no time. The Germans, perhaps as much in fear as in exasperation with Hitler looking on, resorted to highly physical play to impose their superiority, with Dhyan Chand having one of his teeth knocked off by the goalkeeper. The Indians answered back with a sublime tactic designed to embarrass the Germans.

Returning after receiving first aid, Dhyan Chand instructed the team not to score any more goals, deciding to teach them a lesson in ball control instead. Time and again, the wizards took the ball right up to the German goal, but began back passing it instead of scoring, leaving the hosts fuming and dumbfounded. so awestruck was Hitler by his genius during the Berlin Olympics, he momentarily let go of his supreme Aryan race philosophy to offer Chand German citizenship and a post of colonel in the Nazi army. It’s hard to confirm if this is true, but it lingers on among the many legends that still abound about the man.

The legend of Dhyan Chand

They say that they broke his stick in Holland to check if there was a magnet inside. In Japan, the press whispered that he uses a special glue on it. We are told that a statue of him exists in a Vienna sports club of a man with four arms and four sticks that abstractly captures his wizardry. Legend has it that at penalty corners, which normally required at least two men, he would stop the ball on his own, then rise and strike it with remarkable swiftness. Once, frustrated by missing a few chances to score, Chand argued with the referee about the measurement of the post, which was later found to be different from the official minimum width.

Three-time Olympic 🥇 medallist Major Dhyan Chand paved the way for revolutionizing Indian hockey

Remembering the hockey ace on the eve of #NationalSportsDay!#StrongerTogether pic.twitter.com/AtlHYtB9LA

— Olympic Khel (@OlympicKhel) August 29, 2022

There are stories aplenty, some spiced up over the years, but almost always based on more than a modicum of fact. But the statistics are indisputable, and etched in the history books. When Dhyan Chand finally hung up his boots 24 years later, he left behind an astonishing legacy. Three Olympic golds, over 570 international goals at an average of nearly 4 goals per match, and stories of legend that speak more about him than numbers ever will.

The legend fades away

Fairy tale finishes in sport are a rarity, even for the best of them. While Dhyan Chand was undisputedly the best of them on the field, off the field he led a quiet life, away from the spotlight. He made the odd chief guest appearance, but largely, the aura around him faded away quickly. After a brief stint at coaching, he retired to his beloved Jhansi, settling back in to his roots as a fisherman and deer hunter who loved to cook. There hardly exists any literature on him post his playing days, not even the odd interview.

Sadly, he suffered the ignominy of being turned away from a hockey tournament in Ahmedabad, and got by his final years on a meagre pension. When he fell ill with liver cancer, all he could manage was a bed in a general ward in AIIMS, until a journalist got wind of his plight, and had him moved to a private room. On his deathbed, in 1979, legend has it that his last words to his doctor were “Indian hockey is dying”.

He wasn’t a man given to self-praise, and perhaps was rightly lamenting about how the game treated its giants. Whatever the context in which his last words were uttered, if indeed they were, they too now belong to that long list of legends and myths that revolve around the man whose birthday is now celebrated as India’s National Sports Day, and that’s a fact.

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