National Sports Day 2023: Major Dhyan Chand is considered one of the best hockey players of all time. He had an extraordinary talent for scoring goals, due to which India won hockey gold medals in the Olympic Games of 1928, 1932, and 1936. His era is called the “golden period” of Indian hockey.
He is called the “Hockey Wizard” due to his excellent control over the ball. Major Dhyan Chand announced his retirement from hockey in the year 1948.
National Sports Day 2023: History, Significance, and Key Facts
11 interesting facts about Major Dhyan Chand
1. Dhyan Singh joined the Indian Army at the age of 16 and started playing hockey there. Since Dhyan Singh practised during the night, his fellow players started addressing him with the nickname “Chand”.
2. Once while playing a match, Dhyan Chand was unable to score a single goal against the opposition team. After failing several times, he complained to the match referee about the measurement of the goalpost, and surprisingly, it was found that the official width of the goalpost was not in accordance with international rules.
3. After India’s first match at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, people gathered at the hockey ground to watch Dhyan Chand’s magical hockey. The headline of a German newspaper was: ‘There is now a magic show on the Olympic campus.’ The next day, the streets of Berlin were strewn with posters, with the words “Go to the hockey stadium and see the magic of the Indian magician”.
4. According to a legend, when Hitler saw Dhyan Chand’s magical game against Germany, he offered him to settle in Germany and offered him the rank of colonel in his army, but Dhyan Chand smiled and rejected the offer.
5. During a match with Germany at the 1936 Olympics, Dhyan Chand’s tooth was broken when he collided with Germany’s fiery goalkeeper “Tito Varnholt”. Upon returning to the field after first aid, Dhyan Chand advised the Indian players not to score goals in order to “teach a lesson” to the German players. Indian players repeatedly took the ball to the goalpost of Germany and again brought the ball back to their court.
6. In 1935, when the Indian hockey team was in Australia, the great cricket player Don Bradman and the greatest hockey player Dhyan Chand met each other in Adelaide. After watching Dhyan Chand’s game, Don Bradman remarked, “He scores goals in hockey in the same way that runs are scored in cricket.”
7. The residents of Vienna (Austria) had installed a statue of him with four hands and four hockey sticks indicating his control and mastery over the ball. However, this can also be an exaggeration because at present there is neither any such idol nor documents related to it.
8. Once in the Netherlands, the authorities broke Dhyan Chand’s hockey stick due to the possibility of having a magnet inside it.
9. Although Dhyan Chand played many memorable matches, he considered the final match of the 1933 “Beighton Cup”, which was played between “Calcutta Custom” and “Jhansi Heroes”, as his best match.
10. In the Summer Olympics of 1932, India defeated the United States and Japan 24–1 and 11–1 respectively. Of these 35 goals, Dhyan Chand scored 12 goals while his brother Roop Singh scored 13 goals. Due to this spectacular performance, both brothers came to be known as “Hockey Twins”.
11. In his complete career he played around 185 matches and scored more than 400 goals.
The Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honour, in the year 1956. His birthday is celebrated as National Sports Day in India on 29 August and several awards are presented by the President on this day. Hockey magician Dhyan Chand’s autobiography titled “Goal” was published in 1952.
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Source: vcmp.edu.vn