After having known about him from sankar and after having received a thought-provoking acknowledgement from electromaniacs, i feel that my blog needs this splash of patriotism too. Major Dhyan Chand Singh (August 29, 1905 – December 3, 1979)
The title of this article are the opening words of his autobiography 'Goal'.
1. Regarded as the greatest ever hockey player of all times
2. Part of the Gold winning Indian team in three olympic games
3. Even today Dhyan Chand is to hockey what Bradman is to cricket,
Mohammed Ali to boxing and Pele to football — the unchallenged masters
of their sport and the only Indian sportsperson who can lay claim to
such an honour
4. A German newspaper carried a banner headline: 'The Olympic complex
now has a magic show too.' The next day, there were posters all over
Berlin: 'Visit the hockey stadium to watch the Indian magician Dhyan
Chand in action.'
5. Of the 584 goals the visitors scored, Dhyan Chand's personal tally
was 200. Don Bradman was so surprised by the number of goals that he
quipped: 'Were they made by a hockey player or a batsman?'
Don Bradman remarked "He scores goals like runs in Cricket".
6. They broke his hockey stick in Holland to check if there was a
magnet inside; in Japan they decided it was glue; in Germany, Adolf
Hitler even wanted to buy it.
7. Impressed by his performance, Adolf Hitler supposedly offered to
make Dhyan Chand a Field Marshal in the German army, but the latter
refused. After seeing him play at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Hitler
offered Dhyan Chand, a Major in the British Indian Army, German
citizenship and a higher army post. The prolific striker politely
turned it down.
8. In 2002, the union sports ministry of India introduced a Lifetime
Achievement Award in sports in the name of Dhyan Chand.
9. Chand however died penniless and uncared for in a hospital,
receiving a meagre pension. Dhyan Chand was very sad to see India
finish seventh at the Montreal Olympics, 1976. The Indian team
included his son, Ashok Kumar. His grand daughter Neha Singh played
for India in the 1998 World Cup.
When he was on his deathbed at All India Institute of Medical
Sciences, he reportedly told a doctor that Indian hockey was dying.He
then went into a coma and died in 1979.
If after reading this, you want to know more about this indian player, go ahead and please visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhyan_chand
http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/dhyanchand/brijnath.htm
http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/patjansen/dhyanchand.htm
Thank you !
3 comments:
He is the meaning for the word Legend. Its very unfortunate that very few has known abt him in this generation where people are crazy abt cricket. I myself came to know very recently abt him. I really wondered what a great player he was. Its sure that he was not given the reward for his achievement. People should think abt other games than cricket and appreciate the real talent.
I find it hard to blame the people. I checked into a few prominent sites to check if they had had any articles abt Dhyanchand. shockingly few.
I came up across this article written by Tom Alter ten years back !
http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/patrakaar/tomalter.htm
"We sit in our cozy little drawing rooms and come up with our cozy little theories about what is wrong with Indian sport. We are what is wrong with Indian sport"
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