Player sketch: Broome Pinniger

Name: Broome Eric Pinniger
Born: 28 December 1902, in Saharanpur, India
Died: 30 December 1996, in Edinburgh, Scotland
Position: Centre half
Olympic journey: 1928 Amsterdam, 1932 Los Angeles
Medals: Two gold

On the field, as his position suggests, Broome Eric Pinniger was the fulcrum of the All-India teams that won the Olympic hockey competition in 1928 and 1932. Off the field he was at the centre of controversies over the choice of captain on both occasions.

In Amsterdam in 1928, Pinniger stood in as captain for the crucial last league match against Switzerland and the final against hosts Holland after regular captain Jaipal Singh left the team in a huff. One possible reason for Jaipal Singh’s sudden departure was that he “was victim of a conspiracy hatched by the dominating Anglo-Indian group in the team who had the backing of the Englishmen controlling Indian hockey at that time.” [M.L. Kapur, Romance of Hockey (Ambala Cantt: M.L. Kapur, 1968), 276.] Pinniger was the designated vice-captain of the team, having led the Punjab in the preceding Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta. The Oxford-educated Jaipal Singh was in England when the Inter-Provincial was held and did not take part.

In 1932, after another Inter-Provincial Tournament-cum-Olympics selection trials in Calcutta, Pinniger was once again passed over for the captaincy, which was offered to his Punjab teammate Lal Shah Bokhari. Pinniger responded by saying he would decline the invitation to go to Los Angeles with the Indian Olympic team.

The Calcutta newspaper The Statesman, gleefully reported the clash between two Punjab players. “In an interview Pinniger explained that he had no resentment against Lal Shah personally or racially, but what he quarrelled with was the principle of the selection,” the newspaper's correspondent wrote from Allahabad two days after the Inter-Provincial tournament. “If either (Richard James) Allen or (Leslie Charles) Hammond, or any other member of the Olympic team of 1928, Indian or Anglo-Indian, had been selected, he would have made no protest, but he could not understand the appointment of a player in such a responsible position who has not had experience for such an important tour.” [The Statesman, 17 March 1932, 11.] Dhyan Chand was the other player from the 1928 team to retain his place for the 1932 Olympics, but Pinniger pointedly did not mention him by name in his alternatives for the captain’s position.

Pinniger was later persuaded to change his mind and he played in the Los Angeles Olympics. However, his outburst against Lal Shah cost him the vice-captaincy. Assistant manager Pankaj Gupta convened a formal meeting of the players for electing the vice-captain on board the N. Y. K. Haruna Maru on the night of June 13, 1932, hours before the ship reached Kobe in Japan on way to Los Angeles. “Three names were proposed—Pinninger, Allen and Hammond,” wrote Dhyan Chand in his autobiography Goal! “A vote was taken which resulted in Allen getting 9 votes, Pinniger 5 votes and Hammond 1.” Pinniger clearly did not get all the ‘Anglo-Indian’ votes, because there were eight of them in the squad. Dhyan Chand’s name was not proposed for the captaincy.

Pinniger opted out of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin when Dhyan Chand was chosen captain. The reasons proffered included injury, failure to get leave from his job at the North West Railway and political hassle. [S. Muthiah and Harry MacLure, The Anglo-Indians: A 500-Year History (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2013), 167; Kapur, Romance of Hockey, 288; “Hockey legend honoured: 81 and going strong,” The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.] However, there is a brief epilogue to Pinniger’s Olympic story. After the Indians suffered a shock defeat to the Germans in one of the warm-up matches on July 17, 1936, the team management lost confidence in centre half M.A.K. Massood and also decided they needed an inside right. “That same night Gupta rushed to Berlin and sent a cable to Kunwar Sir Jagdish Prasad, president of the IHF, asking him to send (A.I.S.) Dara, failing whom Frank Wells or Eric Henderson, and also Pinniger,” wrote Dhyan Chand in Goal! Dara flew out of India and reached Berlin just before the semi-finals, but Pinniger never did go.

In his playing days, Pinniger was famous enough for hockey sticks bearing his autograph to be sold widely, though he never received a penny, he claimed in a newspaper interview in 1984, because it would have cost him his amateur status. [The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.]

Pinniger was thought of as the best centre half of his time and on his day he could even bottle up Dhyan Chand, as he did during the replayed semi-final between the Punjab and the United Provinces at the first Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta in 1928.

Pinniger was also good at other sports. In 1919, he reportedly “won one of the Empire’s top shooting awards, the Viceroy’s Cup, which, had India sent a team to Antwerp the following year, would certainly have qualified him.” [The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.] He won the victor ludorum, or Games Winners’ award from the 1934 Western Asian Games. After 1936, while still at the peak of his powers as a hockey player, Pinniger is known to have taken up tennis. [Kapur, Romance of Hockey, 288.]

Broome Eric Pinniger was the second of three children born to Broome Pinniger and Grace Ethel Thomas. [Family trees featuring Broome Eric Pinniger in Ancestry.co.uk.] He studied at Oak Grove School in Mussoorie. [The Statesman, 8 March 1928, 13.] He joined the North West Railway in 1925 [The Statesman, 13 March 1932] and was probably based in Lahore in 1932 (Ancestry.com. California, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008). He is known to have played for North West Railway, the Punjab Hockey Association, the Delhi Rangers Club and the Ghaziabad Sports Club.[The Statesman, 8 March 1928, 13.]

Pinniger stayed back in Pakistan after Partition and in 1949 returned to Scotland, from where his grandparents had gone to India at the time of the mutiny (or the First War of Independence, as it is referred to in India) in 1857. [The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.] He was married to Florence Wilhelmina Ross.

*The post was edited on October 8, 2014 to substitute the term "mutiny" for India's First War of Independence; the article in The Glasgow Herald referred to in the post uses that term to describe the events of 1857.