INDIAN HOCKEY LEGEND: Leslie Walter Claudius
The first player in the hockey world to figure in four Olympics and win a medal in each (three gold, one silver), Bengal’s Leslie Walter Claudius is an Indian sporting icon. His first love was football, but he moved to hockey primarily to fulfill his desire to play at the Olympics.
After two years of playing in the hectic domestic circle and establishing his credentials, Claudius’ bid for Olympic selection in 1948. However, his state did not do well at the knock-out National championship, a team selection event. Still, his consistency and match-winning traits were not lost sight of. His stellar show at both the Calcutta Hockey League and Aga Khan Cup counted. He made the cut for the 1948 London Olympics. Before that, his only international experience was the 1947 East Africa tour. At London, where the playing eleven was a difficult choice, ’s potential was fully utilized.
Claudius was just 21 years and four months old when he played his maiden Olympics, about 10 years younger than his captain Kishen Lal.
Winning all matches, Independent India won its first – overall fourth — gold medal at London.
By the time the next two Olympics dawned, the diminutive dynamo Claudius became an inseparable part of Indian teams that went abroad. On the back of his cool-headed game and ability to steer the midfield, he went on to win his second and the third Olympic gold (1952 & 1956). Claudius’ all-round game appeared to draw no competition for the right-half position in Indian teams. The same cannot be said of other positions.
Till then of course the Indians were riding the hockey world like a colossus. However, their supremacy was hotly challenged in the late 1950s.
India for the first time did not win a tournament it took part in. The downturn occurred when Pakistan clinched the gold in the third Asian Games in Tokyo in 1958 on goal average, despite drawing goalless with India in the last pool match.
India turned to little Leslie for a turnaround. Despite other triple Olympians and equally famous names around like, say, RS Gentle, Claudius was chosen to lead India for the first rebuilding exercise to regain lost glory, a tour of Europe in 1959.
He was then elevated to captaincy for the Rome Olympics, his fourth Games campaign. He was then 33- and-a-half years old and had 14 years of intense international experience to his credit.
Claudius was the first Anglo-Indian to lead independent India at the Olympics– and till date the lone flag bearer for the community which once was the engine room of Indian hockey.
Claudius’ India won all but the final in Rome. There was no seventh straight Olympic gold for India.
Claudius, with three Olympic gold and silver and the captaincy role to boot, had set an incomparable record.
History proved later that only two more Indians could play four Olympics. Even the duo – Udham Singh and Dhanraj Pillay – did not lead the country at the Olympics.
Claudius is a unique hockey player, so too his record.
With #?……… caps against his name, and having played both World Cup and Asian Games a record FOUR times, he expected a call-up for his fourth Olympics.
However, Pillay was not considered for the 2003 Olympic Qualifying tournament, but the chief coach Rajinder Singh Sr was forced to recall him for the 2004 Athens Olympics after a public outcry and demonstrations. As irony would have it, even Rajinder was dropped at the last moment. In his place came the German Gerard Rach -- the first instance of a foreign coach of an Indian national squad.
It was a new experience for Dhanraj, commanded by a non-Olympian in an Olympics. Rach played him in all but one match though less time in comparison with previous Olympic matches.
When Dhanraj landed in Athens for another shot at an Olympic medal, he had made history. He was the first – and only till now -- Indian player to figure in the four Olympics on synthetic turf. Legends Leslie Claudius and Udham Singh had the distinction being four-time Olympians before him but the game was played only on natural grass in those days.