Hockey suffered the most of all sports after partition in 1947. The Lahore region that gave 7 out of 18 Berlin Olympics team members went to Pakistan. The Anglo-Indians (9 out of 16 in the 1928 Olympics) left in droves to settle abroad. The British team, who till then refrained from Olympics hockey, was back in the fray. Against this historic background, Balbir Singh Dosanj played an outstanding role in restoring the hockey honour of India at the first Post- World War Olympics in London (1948). Not many would have expected the 24-year old centre-forward to inherit the legacy of Dhyan Chand at the London Olympics so easily and elegantly.
Balbir Singh scored 6 goals to outplay Argentina (9-1), making it a hat-trick on debut at the Wembley grounds. He would later attain a hat-trick of Olympic golds as well.
In the final against the British, latching on to passes from captain Kishan Lal and Kanwar Digvijay Singh ‘Babu’, Balbir pumped in the first two goals to gain independent India’s first Olympic gold.
The glory, coming after a gap of 12 years due to the war and largely deriving strength from native talent, re-established India’s supremacy that lasted for another decade and a half. The format posed a problem in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as India were directly seeded in to the quarterfinals, leaving no place for complacency. The flag-bearer of the Indian contingent at the opening ceremony, Balbir saw India labouring hard to defeat Austria (4-0) in the quarters. He could score just once.
In the semifinals against Great Britain, Balbir made amends. All three of India’s goals came from his extraordinary ball sense, artistic but limited dribbling and first-touch scoring shots. He scored a second hat-trick in only his fourth Olympic match. In the final, he made mincemeat of Holland’s defence with a splendid tally of five goals even as India won 6-1. “When the ball is with Balbir in the circle, the rival defence is paralysed,” exclaimed his peer Keshav Dutt.
In the run up to the XII Olympiad at Melbourne, Balbir was in great form (Malaysia tour 1954: 83 of the 121 goals in 16 matches; a year later on the New Zealand-Australia tour, 141 of 203 goals in 38 matches).
Under his captaincy India annexed its sixth straight gold. Balbir was injured while he was playing which led him to comment later: “For me, on one hand was the agony of pain, on the other the ecstasy of winning glory, of triumph. The latter outweighed my pain. It now mattered little even if I lost both my limbs.”
His post-Olympic career too was colourful. He changed his employment from Punjab Police to accept the leadership of the Sports Department of the Punjab government. The State emerged as a sporting giant under his stewardship. He also served many stints as national coach, selector and manager. India won its only World Cup in Kuala Lumpur in 1975 when he was the manager. Elated, Balbir wrote his autobiography ‘The Golden Hat trick: My Hockey Days’. He received the Padma Shri in 1957 – the first sportsman to be bestowed the honour. The octogenarian now lives with his son in Canada.
Extracted from Great Indian Olympians by K Arumugam