6 best pre-Independence Indian athletes

Nearly two decades before India threw off the shackles of imperialism, the country had already etched its name in the glorious annals of sport history by winning the Olympic Gold in Hockey at the Amsterdam Games. India wasn’t free, but with the help of sport, it had shown the world, that its spirit was very much alive and burning.While India continued to dominate the game of hockey at the quadrennial event for nearly an entire decade, Indian athletes in other sports too were placing the country on the global sporting map with their accomplishments.Let us take a stroll through history and remember the Indian athletes whose achievements made the country that was still under the yoke of colonialism proud.

#1 Norman Pritchard

Norman Pritchard (In-set) was the first athlete to represent India in the Olympics.

Born in Calcutta, in June 1877, Norman Pritchard was the first Asian athlete to win an Olympic medal.

Pritchard was born to Great Britain parents in India, and he went on to become the first athlete to represent the country of his birth in the Olympics at Paris in 1900. Pritchard won two silver medals in the Paris Olympics in 1900.

He finished second to American Walter Tewksbury in the 200 metres race, while he came second to the great Alvin Kraenzlein in the 2000 metres hurdles. Pritchard briefly held the record in the second heat of the 100 metres hurdles before Kraenzlein overtook him in the final.

Norman Pritchard, later became Norman Trevor, as he charted a career as an actor on Broadway and Hollywood. He went on to star in films like Beau Geste (1926) and Dancing Mothers (1926) before he passed away in Los Angeles in 1929.

#2 Roop Singh

Roop Singh scored 13 goals in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

While Dhyan Chand remains India’s greatest Hockey player ever, the country owes its domination in the sport at the Olympics equally to his younger brother, Roop Singh.

In the 1932 Olympics at Los Angeles, when the Indian Hockey team rolled over Japan and America like a juggernaut, Roop Singh and Dhyan Chand scored 24 of the 35 goals for the country, which led to them being dubbed ‘Hockey Twins’.

Roop Singh, in fact, went on to achieve the ‘impossible’: outscoring Dhyan Chand in the Olympics, scoring 13 goals to his elder brother’s 11.

So overawed were the Germans with Roop Singh’s craft that they honoured him by naming a street after his name.

#3 Vijay Merchant

Vijay Merchant is widely regarded as the father of the ‘Bombay School of Batting’.

One of India’s greatest cricketers ever, Vijay Merchant’s name often dominates discussions surrounding the game’s best openers.

Merchant, although was a middle-order career at the time when he began his international career under the captaincy of CK Nayudu in 1933, he soon moved up to top of the batting order, scoring all three hundreds as an opener. While Sunil Gavaskar is generally considered the greatest opening batsman India ever produced, if not the best ever, Merchant certainly comes a close second.

Considered the father of the ‘Bombay School of Batting’, Merchant was a prolific run-scorer with a seemingly insatiable appetite for runs. In 150 first class matches, he scored over 13000 runs at an average of 71, which is second only to Don Bradman’s.

However, as a cricketer, his most successful campaign as a batsman came on the 1936 tour of England, when he scored 1745 first-class runs and was also involved in a memorable 203-run first-wicket stand with Mushtaq Ali in the Manchester Test, when India was staring at a 368-run deficit.

Merchant represented Bombay in the Ranji Trophy and scored 16 hundreds for his team, of which 11 were double tons. Along with Lala Amarnath, Vijay Hazare and Mushtaq Ali, Merchant established India’s credentials as a cricketing nation when the team was still in its embryonic stage.

#4 Syed Mohammad Hadi

Hadi made it to the quarter-finals of Wimbledon in 1926.

A multi-talented sportsman, Syed Mohammad Hadi was proficient in as many as seven sports which earned him the sobriquet ‘Rainbow Hadi’.

However, his greatest exploits came in the games of tennis and cricket. Hadi, who showed prodigious talent during his days as a student at Cambridge was purportedly denied the captaincy of the Cambridge tennis team owing to his being an Indian.

Miffed, but unwilling to surrender, Hadi later went on to represent India in the Davis Cup. He also appeared in ‘The Championships’ at Wimbledon five times, making it to the quarter-finals in the doubles’ event in 1926.

Hadi holds the record for scoring the first century in the Ranji Trophy tournament, which was instituted in 1934. Apart from his exploits in Ranji Trophy, Hadi also excelled in first-class matches and represented India in an unofficial test as well.

#5 Ranjitsinhji

Renowned for his innovative stroke-play, Ranjitsinhji invented the now common ‘Leg Glance’ shot.

Although no living soul in India or elsewhere ever saw Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji play, his is a household name in the country today courtesy of his being immortalised in the form of India’s most prestigious domestic tournament, ‘Ranji Trophy, which is named in his honour.

After having proven his wherewithal at Cambridge University, where he studied, Ranjitsinhji made his first-class debut for Sussex in 1893, when Queen Victoria was still the Empress of India. His swashbuckling style and innovative stroke-play soon saw him being named in the English team and he made his Test debut at Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester against Australia in 1896.

Ranjitsinhji scored a century on Test debut, a 150, and left fans from both nations mesmerised with his ability. Among his most memorable contributions to the game of cricket are the ‘Late Cut’ and ‘Leg Glance’. His unorthodox approach to the game, far from alienating him from the crowd, only served to endear him further.

Watching him was, by recorded accounts, a most exhilarating experience. His service to his county was recognised when he was appointed captain of Sussex in 1899, a position he held for three years.

#6 Dhyan Chand

At the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, Dhyan Chand scored all the three goals in the final to helpIndia win its first Olympic Gold Medal.

Arguably the greatest hockey player ever, such was Dhyan Chand’s mastery over the game that his English superiors prevented him from accompanying his regiment to fight in the Second World War lest his life be lost.

Dhyan Chand came into national prominence following his spectacular performance in the Inter-Provincial tournament, in which he represented United Provinces

On the largest stage, Dhyan Chand finally came to terms with his destiny. He almost single-handedly steered India to its first Olympic Gold Medal, and the first medal in Hockey.

Dhyan Chand scored a jaw-dropping 14 goals in five matches including all the three goals in the Gold Medal match against the host nation, Netherlands. Four years later, at Los Angeles, Dhyan Chand replicated his performance at Amsterdam, scoring 11 goals in two matches as only three teams participated in Field Hockey to help India pocket its second Gold Medal in the sport.

India went into the finals against Germany, the host nation, not having conceded a single goal and Adolf Hitler was in attendance to watch the match., no doubt hoping to see Germany win the Gold Medal. However, a rampaging Dhyan Chand saw to it that the Gold Medal did not escape India’s iron clasp. Having been named Captain, Chand lead from the front and scored three of India’s eight goals in the final to win the country’s third successive Gold Medal.

So impressed was Hitler with Dhyan Chand’s skills that he offered the latter the position of ‘Field Marshal’ in the German Army.