Balkrishan Singh

Born: 10 March 1933

Died: 31 December 2004

He was a field hockey player from India who won the gold medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics.
He is perhaps the only player in the country to have won the gold medal both as a player and as a coach.
He was a member of the gold medal-winning team in the 1956 Olympics and was chief coach of the team that won the gold in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
He went to Australia in 1965 to train the women’s national squad.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was so impressed with him that he went on record praising his coaching abilities.
He was the first coach to experiment with the concept of total hockey in India.
He first put this concept into use during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Total hockey, in his view, was hockey which should be played like basketball — attack together and defend together.
He is hockey’s first-ever player-coach.
In him, one could easily traverse through the vicissitude of Independent India’s hockey history.
More so, the twice Olympic medallist (1956 gold, 1960 silver) is the lone Olympian to coach four Olympic teams.
He was the first Indian coach to adopt the 4-4-2-1 style.
He metamorphosed the unique Indian traits in the concept of total hockey which earned him many laurels in the 80s.