About this blog

Indian Dribble is about Indian hockey’s journey at the Olympics, but like Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, its eyes are fixed resolutely on the past even as it is propelled, inevitably, towards the future. That’s nothing new, some of you might say. You are right, but not entirely.

When it comes to hockey on the Indian subcontinent, the glories of yore cast such a long shadow on each new failure that it does seem as if we will never come out in the sun. However, as it sometimes happens when the shadows are long, we’ve also lost sight of what lies at their heart.

We painfully remember each of the eight Olympic gold medals India won before and after Independence every time the current national team disappoints, but how many of us can name the eleven men who won us the first of those medals in Amsterdam in 1928? Okay, we remember Dhyan Chand, and maybe Jaipal Singh, the captain of the first Indian Olympic hockey team, but what do we know of Broome Eric Pinniger, who stood in as captain during the final stages of the 1928 campaign? Do we acknowledge the contribution of players who came from regions that would become Pakistan after Partition? Do we even remember that Pakistan too have won three Olympic gold medals since 1947?

How little we know about the early heroes of hockey on the subcontinent. To take random examples, we are not even sure if Richard James Allen, the first-choice goalkeeper in every pre-Independence All-India team, won three Olympic gold medals or two; we don’t know if 1928 campaigner Gateley’s first name was Maurice, or Michael.

This blog is an attempt to collate, from scattered sources, all that is known about each hockey player who represented British India in the Olympics of 1928, 1932 and 1936. Apart from contemporary newspapers, books and articles written later, and Olympic databases, I have also trawled through the ancestry archives and got in touch with the descendants of at least three of the players.

I have begun with two of the fifteen players who went to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and will keep adding the later names as I go along. I have also included team line-ups, formations and related details from the matches India played in the Olympics in 1928. In the next phase I will add information about the 1932 and 1936 Olympics.

I have tried as far as possible to indicate the sources of each piece of information and anecdote. Certain apocryphal stories will be included because they sometime reveal more than official documents—they tell us how the people in question lived in the imagined worlds of others.

The reason for putting all this up in the public domain is my belief that it should have always been there to be used, discussed and expanded. I would be happy if anyone using the information acknowledges my role in putting the pieces together. I would also urge everyone to point out mistakes, add new details and engage in discussions about Indian hockey. These will be invaluable to my research and I assure you that everyone who contributes will be acknowledged in the proper place.

Contact:
Nikhilesh Bhattacharya (email: indiandribble@gmail.com)