July 30, 1984
The eleven figures in the front may not be world famous, but there are places in India where they are just as familiar as the Taj Mahal. India's national field hockey team currently ranks second (behind Australia) in international competition, and embodies a past as shimmering as those reflections in the pool.
The first Indian hockey team to enter the Olympics, in 1928, carried off a gold medal; five more followed in succession, and India won the hockey gold again in 1964 and 1980.
Current captain Zafar Iqbal (sixth from left) takes this legacy of triumph seriously. An engineer with Indian Airlines, he plays hard but 'clean' (no on-field tantrums), and leads by example rather than exhortations.
He calls his teammates bhai (brother); they include Hindus, Sikhs, Anglo-Indians and Muslims, a good cross-section of India's vast and still discordant nation. Factionalism fades before common purpose: to preserve the team's traditional supremacy.
Says chief coach Balkrishan Singh: "We should give our lives on the field. The rest is in the laps of the gods." And, he mentions in an afterthought, the umpires.
