4 min readNew DelhiAug 31, 2024 07:50 PM IST
First published on: Aug 29, 2024 at 06:28 PM IST
The National Sports Day is celebrated on August 29 in the memory of Dhyan Chand, the first superstar of Indian hockey, and arguably India’s first sporting superstar.
Here is why he means so much to Indian sports.
Wizard of the game
Quite simply, Dhyan Chand, born in Allahabad in 1905, was the first superstar of hockey, and considered a wizard of the game. He was the chief protagonist as India won three consecutive Olympic hockey gold medals — Amsterdam 1928, Los Angeles 1932, and Berlin 1936. He is said to have wowed the watching public with his sublime skills, intricate dribbling and gluttonous appetite for scoring.
During those tournaments, there was no team that could compete with India — and most of India’s matches were won with huge victory margins. India beat hosts the Netherlands 3-0 in the 1928 final, the United States were thrashed by a scarcely-believable margin of 24-1 in the 1932 gold medal match, while Germany went down 8-1 in the 1936 decider.
In all, Dhyan Chand played 12 Olympic matches, and scored an unbelievable 33 goals — just shy of scoring a hattrick each game!
Anecdotes and apocryphal stories
Many stories surrounding Dhyan Chand’s prowess with a hockey stick are difficult to confirm. Some are definitely apocryphal.
It is said that once his sublime skill and close control of the ball aroused such suspicion that his stick was broken to see whether there was a magnet inside. One has to remember that the game was played on natural grass in those days in contrast to the astro turf now, and the surface would often be bumpy and uneven. This made ball control more difficult for lesser mortals.
During the 1936 Berlin Games, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler — a proponent of Aryan racial superiority — was so enamoured with Dhyan Chand’s play that he offered him German citizenship and the post of Colonel in his country’s Army, a proposition that the Indian ace is said to have promptly refused.
A shining light in Indian sports
Dhyan Chand played during India’s pre-independence years, a time when the local population was subjugated and made to feel inferior by the ruling British. This is what gave his achievements on the field even more importance for Indians. Seeing an Indian dominating Europeans in a sport invented by them evoked a lot of pride.
Moreover, for a long time, hockey was the only sport in which India consistently excelled at the international and Olympic stage. In fact, starting from Amsterdam 1928, India won seven of the eight hockey gold medals at the Games. Apart from K D Jadhav’s wrestling bronze at Helsinki 1952, India had to wait until Atlanta 1996 and tennis player Leander Paes for an Olympic medal in a sport other than hockey.
There were other great contemporary players like K D Singh ‘Babu’, Roop Singh, and Balbir Singh, but Dhyan Chand’s name was always taken first.
Recognition of his achievements
Apart from August 29 being celebrated as the National Sports Day, numerous awards and other honours are named after Dhyan Chand. In 2021, the Narendra Modi government renamed the erstwhile Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, India’s highest sporting honour, after Dhyan Chand. An award for lifetime achievement in sport was already named after him.
New Delhi’s National Stadium was renamed Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium in 2002.
This is an updated version of an explainer originally published in 2021.
Dhyan Chand with the ball in the 1936 Olympic semi-finals versus France. (Wikimedia Commons) 
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