Tokyo Asiad - 1958

Gurudev Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, becoming the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in any field.

Tagore (1861 - 1941) was a literary genius, who wrote 50 and odd volumes of poetry, plays, short stories and novels. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays, travel diaries and two autobiographies. Tagore also left numerous drawings, paintings and songs for which he wrote the music himself.

Tagore founded an experimental open-air university Viswa Bharati in Santiniketan, Bengal, based on the Upanishadic ideals of education. Tagore was knighted by the British Government in 1915, but he returned the honour in 1919 in protest against the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre of that year.

Tagore, a nationalist and an internationalist, wrote the national anthems of India (Jana Gana Mana) and Bangladesh (Aamar Sonar Bangla).

• Hockey was first introduced in the 1958 Asian Games at Tokyo. Only 5 teams - India, Pakistan, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia participated in the inaugural hockey tournament. Of these five teams, all except South Korea have appeared in every edition of the Asian Games hockey competition.
  
  
• India's results in hockey were: beat Malaysia 6-0, beat South Korea 2-1 and beat Japan 8-0.
  
  
• On the other hand, Pakistan's results were: beat Malaysia 6-0, beat South Korea 8-0 and beat Japan 5-0. Muneer Dar scored 5 penalty corner goals in Pakistan's match against South Korea.
  
  
• In the final, India drew with Pakistan 0-0. Pakistan was declared the winner the inaugural Asian Games hockey competition by virtue of a better goal average.
  
  
• After winning the first Asian Games hockey gold, Pakistan would go on to win all other inaugural hockey competitions since the nation was created in 1947 (except for the Olympic hockey gold, which it won in the 4th attempt). The first World Cup was won by Pakistan (1971 - Barcelona). The first Junior World Cup was won by Pakistan (1978 - Versailles). The first Champions Trophy was won by Pakistan (1978 - Lahore). The first Asia Cup was won by Pakistan (1982 - Karachi). This string of inaugural victories was broken when Pakistan failed to qualify for the semi-finals of the inaugural Commonwealth Games hockey competition in 1998.

Final Standings:

1 - Pakistan, 2 - India, 3 - South Korea, 4 - Malaysia, 5 - Japan

Indian Team:

Punjab	Balbir Singh Sr. (captain), Udham Singh, Gurjeet Singh, Gurudev Singh, Bakshish Singh
Railways	Mohammed Yakub Quereshi, Jagjeet Singh, Balbir Singh Jr., Balkrishan Singh
Bengal	Leslie Claudius, Chinnnadorai Desamuthu
Uttar Pradesh	D. P. Rati, A. W. Caleb
Services	Shankar Lakshman (goalkeeper)
Mumbai	N. R. Chauhan
Officials	S. Jagannath (coach), Gurusevak Singh (manager)