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Take a look at the essential concepts, terms, quotes, or phenomena every day and brush up your knowledge. Here’s your knowledge nugget on Hockey @1oo in India.
(Relevance: UPSC has previously asked questions on sports. Since Hockey is completing 100 years in India, it becomes an important topic from an exam perspective.)
November 7 marked the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Indian Hockey Federation – the country’s first governing body for the sport. This date marks the official start of hockey in India. On this occasion, more than 1400 matches are organised across 550 districts.
1. According to the official website of Olympics, “the first version of modern-day field hockey was developed by the British sometime between the late 18th and early 19th century. It was introduced as a popular school game then and made its way to the Indian army during British rule in the 1850s.”
2. In 1876, the first Hockey Association was formed in the UK which provided the first official set of rules. The association continued only for six years however, it was later revived by nine founding member clubs.
3. Indians have been playing hockey — and winning at it — even before the country was born. Calcutta took the lead in 1885 with the formation of the first club; years later, came Bombay and Punjab, where the sport existed in the form of ‘Khido Khundi’ (cotton ball and twisted stick).
4. On November 7, 1925, hockey got a formal structure in India with the creation of the national federation. In 2009, it was replaced by Hockey India. It is the official governing body entrusted with overseeing all hockey-related activities—both men’s and women’s—across the country. It is affiliated with the International Hockey Federation (FIH), the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), and the Asian Hockey Federation (AHF).
5. Before Independence and for some years after that, 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.
6. Hockey was not consistently played at the Olympics. It was only played in 1908 and 1920 and dropped for the other editions. In 1924, Paul Léautey founded the world governing body, the International Hockey Federation(FIH), which ensured hockey became a permanent fixture at the Olympics from Amsterdam 1928 onwards.
— The Indian Hockey Federation applied and earned an FIH membership in 1927, thus ensuring that the Indian hockey team would play its first Olympics in 1928.
7. The Indian hockey team clinched the Olympic gold medal in its first attempt in 1928. So far, the Indian team has won 13 Olympic medals, including 8 gold, 1 silver, and 4 bronze. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Indian men’s hockey team won the Bronze medal after defeating Spain in the match.
8. Dhyan Chand was the first superstar of hockey, considered a wizard or magician of Hockey. 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 scoring ability.
In all, Dhyan Chand played 12 Olympic matches, scoring 33 goals.
9. Dhyan Chand played during India’s pre-independence years, when the local population was subjugated and made to feel inferior by the ruling British. Hence, seeing an Indian dominating the Europeans in a sport invented by them evoked a lot of pride in them.
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.
10. His birthday, August 29, is celebrated as National Sports Day with the President giving away the Arjuna Awards and the other honours — including the one now named after Dhyan Chand himself.
1. Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS): TOPS is a flagship program of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports which is an attempt to provide assistance to India’s top athletes. It aims to improve India’s performance at the Olympics and Paralympics. It provides funding, international exposure, training, and competition support to India’s top hockey athletes and teams.
2. ASMITA hockey league: The Sports Ministry organises ASMITA hockey league across the country at the junior and sub-junior levels to spread hockey among women.
3. Khelo India Scheme: This scheme provides comprehensive support to athletes including hockey players. Under the scheme, scholarships, specialised training and coaching facilities, and access to world-class training facilities are provided to players. The revised scheme focuses on creation and upgradation of Sports Infrastructure, Khelo India Centres and Sports Academies, and promotion of Inclusiveness through Sports.
4. Sports Authority of India | Sports Promotion Schemes: These schemes include the establishment of the National Centres of Excellence (NCOEs), Training centres, and conducting the Sports Talent Contest. It aims to impart specialized training to promising athletes, including Hockey players, by providing state of the art infrastructure and playing facilities, sports science backup, individualized diet prescribed by trained nutritionists and overall supervision under the best coaches, qualified support staff and High Performance Directors.
Consider the following statements:
1. Khido Khundi is a traditional form of Hockey.
2. The India Hockey team played its first Olympics in 1928.
3. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, the India Men’s Hockey team won a Silver medal.
How many of the above-mentioned statements are correct?
(a) Only one
(b) Only two
(c) All three
(d) None
| Answer key |
| (b) |
(Sources: hockeyindia.org, From cybercrime to hockey: How Jamtara is turning a corner, sportsauthorityofindia.com , Explained: Why is Dhyan Chand important for Indian sport?)
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