The United States overwhelmingly ruled Olympic basketball from the initial tournament in 1936 up until the controversial gold-medal loss to the Soviet Union in 1972. But perhaps that was to be expected, seeing as that Americans invented and nurtured the game in its formative years. That can't be said, however, about the Indian field hockey teams that won every single one of their Olympic matches from 1928 until the gold-medal match in 1960. India didn't develop hockey by themselves; they discovered the game before dominating it.
Modern field hockey is generally considered an English product, born and refined at schools during the 19th Century, and passed on to the East by way of the British Empire. According to the Complete Book of the Olympics, India did not play internationally until 1926, but at Amsterdam two years later, the country announced its presence in the previously British-controlled sport in a big way.
That 1928 team (pictured, above) won all five of its matches on its way to gold, scoring 29 goals and giving up none. The victims included the silver and bronze medalists from the previous Olympic tournament in 1920 (there was no event held in 1924), Denmark (5-0) and Belgium (9-0), respectively. Fifteen of the goals were scored by Dhyan Chand, who would go on to become India's Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Cristiano Ronaldo -- all in one person.
It was the beginning of an Olympic dynasty. Led by Chand, first as a player and then as coach, India swept through the 1932, 1936, 1948 and 1952 tournaments without conceding a single loss. As older players retired, new ones would emerge to keep the tradition alive. At London in 1948, the average age of the team was just 20. In the Fifties, Balbir Singh and Randhir Singh Gentle led the continued gold rush. The 1956 team equalled the feat of the 1928 version, sweeping through the tournament without giving up a single goal.
 India attacks the net against Great Britain at the 1952 Games |
In a seven-minute span a half-hour into the first match of the 1968 preliminaries, New Zealand scored twice to mark the first time India had ever given up multiple goals in an Olympic match. The Australians would beat them by the same 2-1 score in the semifinals, but the sport would have a new gold-medal power: Pakistan, the bitter enemy that had been born two decades earlier out of the remnants of British India.
The transfer of Olympic hockey power was signaled during the 1960 Rome Games, when Pakistan defeated India in the gold medal match by a 1-0 score -- India's first-ever loss in Olympic competition. It was complete in the Munich semifinals, when Pakistan shut out India 2-0 on its way to a bitter gold medal match with hosts Germany.
And the joy of the 1975 World Cup was quickly dampened by a seventh-place finish in Montreal the following year, lowlighted by three preliminary losses. Chand, on his deathbed in 1979, reportedly told doctors that Indian hockey was dying before slipping into a coma. With the exception of a gold medal at the boycott-riddled 1980 Moscow Games at the expense of the Cubans and Tanzanians (Pakistan and Germany did not attend), India has not reached the Olympic medal podium in hockey at a fully attended games since Munich.
So what happened to India's national sport? The Olympic hockey tailspin coincided with the rise of cricket superstars like spin quartet. Shortly after the hockey glory days faded, the country's cricket team gained global prominence, winning the World Cup in 1983 and claiming the world championship in 1985. A new generation of young athletes took up bats instead of sticks, striving to emulate cricket heroes like Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath.
But it took another generation for Indian hockey to reach rock bottom. An Asian Cup win in 2007 coincided with the country's five-run victory over Pakistan in Twenty20 cricket (a shortened version of the game) at the inaugural world championships in South Africa. While the cricketers were showered with news coverage and tickertape, the hockey team was all but forgotten. "Why are our hockey players being treated like orphans... why are our politicians biased against hockey, the national game?" asked national team coach Joaquim Carvalho aloud.
Then, at an Olympic qualifying tournament in Chile this past March, the country's entrants were eliminated by Great Britain in a 2-0 result, after which Carvalho quit. "It was almost taken for granted that we will be part of the Olympics," said Viren Rasquinha, who played for the 2004 team that finished with a 2-4-1 record at Athens. "No one could think of an Olympics without India."
The next month, the secretary general of India's hockey federation quit amid charges of corruption related to the fitness of the women's team that was sent to an Olympics qualifying tournament. Shut out of the Olympic for the first time since 1928, the disgrace was complete. Even Ashok Kumar agreed that it was time to start from scratch.
However, Indian hockey can't be left for dead just yet. That women's team claimed a stirring 2-1 win over New Zealand at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, which inspired -- what else -- a musical starring Bollywood heart-throb Shahrukh Khan as the team's coach! (Chak de India was well-received in its debut last year.) Despite 11 injuries and , the team narrowly missed making the 12-team field for the 2008 Games by finishing fourth in a qualifying tournament that took only two squads.
Despite the loss and the fitness controversy, India's Rani Devi was named the qualifying tournament's "most promising young player." It might take some time for its infrastructure to be rebuilt, Indian hockey might just have a future to match its storied past after all.
(Images via 1928 and 1952 Official Reports)
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Sportswriter 
