When Independent India craved for heroes, here was one. Balbir Singh Dosanj, or simply suffixed Senior, the lanky athletic centre-forward emerged as the first sporting icon of the new nation that had just shed its tag of being a British colony.

The immaculate forward embarked on his international career a year before the country gained Independence in 1947 but shot to fame when he played a crucial role in India’s fourth Olympic gold medal at the 1948 London Olympics.

And how! He scored two goals in a 4-0 rout of  Great Britain in the final, not just dealing the hosts their first defeat but settling the issue of world supremacy once and for all in the first ever meeting of the only nations that had ever won Olympic gold.

Balbir’s speed, swerve and artistry mesmerized the British after his early electrifying goals at the famous Wembley stadium, a little over 70 years ago, unsettled the former colonial masters.

In doing so, the young forward inherited the legacy of Dhyan Chand at the London Olympics so seamlessly and elegantly.

The epochal show engineered by Balbir in the British capital paved way for free India to win many more laurels in the field of sports.

The handsome sardar added two more Olympic gold medals – 1952 Helsinki and 1956 Melbourne — to his trophy showcase, each of which is a rich saga in itself.

At the Melbourne Olympics, he wore the gold medal as captain and it provided a theme for his famous book ‘Golden Hat-Trick – My Hockey Playing Days’.

In his long hockey career, which spanned almost eight decades, he had seen everything. He painfully witnessed how the country’s vast hockey resources were divided and depleted by partition.

He bore the pain of seeing his own team-mates turning hostile while representing a new nation, how the Anglo-Indians, the backbone of India’s hockey legacy, were in a hurry to migrate shortly after Independence. And he witnessed partition leading to bloodbath and devastation.

Hockey was the only thing that kept Balbir’s morale up in those days of anguish.

Son of a freedom fighter, the young Balbir refused to join the British Police when offers were made. He fled to distant Delhi to escape such a prospect but was chased, hand-cuffed and brought to Phillur where undivided Punjab’s police training institute was located.

Thankfully, India won freedom shortly later and his pain of being a policeman of a colonial power disappeared.

This kind of patriotic fervor is what made Balbir Sr a unique personality. Patriotism was his very persona. He offered all his three gold medals to the war fund in the 1960s which was justifiably rejected by the then Punjab chief minister Pratap Singh Kairon.

Balbir even risked his life for the country’s honour and it wasn’t restricted to preventing violence during partition. It went far beyond.

What happened in the stands of the hockey stadium at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics merits mention.

The Khalistan movement was at its peak and many adherents disturbed India’s matches by sloganeering, even trying to set the flag afire.

Balbir, then living in Canada, had travelled to Los Angeles to witness the tournament. He was in the stands, pained at what he was seeing.

The golden hat-trick hero of Independent India risked life and limb while approaching the frenzied zealots for peace.

Balbir detailed those moments to this writer often. He was unharmed and saved the tricolor from being burnt and his act of bravery spoke for his unstinted patriotism.

He breathed hockey, so to say. “Hockey is the other woman in my life,” he often said.

Balbir Singh standing next to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his book releasing ceremony

His love for the game was not superficial and was not a route to career advancement. It was platonic and he was one who this writer found thinking about hockey seemingly always. That’s why he donated all his memorabilia to Sports Authority of India for a Museum that never came.

After all Balbir had seen it all as a player, selector, coach and manager. But he also felt the pain of seeing Indian hockey going downhill.

He counseled administrators on the way forward without caring for his own legendary status, gave innumerable interviews in his eagerness to improve things and often worked as an unofficial global ambassador of Indian hockey.

Finally, it’s not the number of goals he scored that was so significant as the manner in which they were struck.

Similarly it was not just Olympic gold medals that mattered but the juncture at which they had been won that defined Balbir as not just a hockey legend but a national icon.

BALBIR SINGH Sr Profile

Born: 10.10.1924
Position: Centre-forward
Played for: Punjab University (before and after Partition)
Profession: Punjab Police, Punjab Sports Dept.
International Debut: 1947 Ceylon Tour
1948 Olympics: Gold
1952  Olympics: Gold
1956 Olympics: Gold (Captain)
1958 Asian Games: Silver (Captain)
Manager: 1971 World Cup: Bronze
1975 World Cup: GOLD
Manager: 1982 Asian Games: Silver
UNIQUE FEAT:

Won National Championships title seven times
Flagbearer of 1952 and 1956 Olympic Contingents
Holds the record of ‘Most goals scored by an individual in an Olympic men’s hockey final (5 vs Holland at the 1952 Olympics). This is recognized by the Guinness Book of Records.
First hockey player to receive Padamshree (1957)
Lit the Asian Games Flame in New Delhi (1982)
Books Authored:  The Golden Hat-trick My Hockey days  (1977) and The Golden Yardstick: In Quest of Hockey Excellence (2008).