Prabhjot Singh

WILY WINGER

As a small kid, playing hockey on his village kucha (unprepared and unleveled) grounds, Prabhjot did not dream that he would become a famous player. His family, why even the village, had no sporting tradition. The facilities for sports were anything but perfect. Yet Prabhjot Singh, who as a boy got infatuated with the game of hockey after watching boys of his village playing it, rose to become India’s live wire left -winger. His is a story of struggle that ended in a stupendous success.

Prabhjot’s forefathers suffered the trauma of partition in 1947. They were uprooted from Sialkot, now in Pakistan, and landed in a small village Masanian near Patala in Punjab. It was a Herculean task for Sardar Jagir Singh, grand father of Prabhjot, to rise and support a big family of three daughters and four sons in an altogether different socio-economic set up. Only one of his sons, Sardar Sewa Singh, could get a decent education — under-graduate from the local Baring Union Christian College. Prabhjot Singh was born on 14th August 1980 as the youngest of three children to Sewa Singh and Balwinder Kaur, a Punjab government employee.

Prabhjot was always playful and hardly took any interest in studies. He enjoyed watching others play and retrieving the balls for the senior boys who used to play hockey on a rugged ground near his home. He hated his A.V.M. School in Patala as it had no hockey grounds! He forced his parents to shift him to another school where he started playing hockey on the famous chitti grounds under the guidance of Bekhtawar Singh Bhumbli. He has made vast strides since then.

Prabhjot, 12, joined local Guru Nanak Dev Academy which raised a hockey team. With Prabhjot in its ranks, the Academy won both district and state Under-14 Championships. Prabhjot was also the member of the Punjab Under-14 hockey team, which won the National School Games in 1990-91 at Jammu. Later, he joined Khalsa Senior Secondary School in Dhadial in Patiala district. In 1995-96, he helped his team win a silver medal in the National School Games. During the same year he played for PEPSU in the Junior National Championship in Delhi. The year 1997 was the turning point in Prabhjot’s life. At Bangalore in the Junior Nationals, he amassed 21 goals in six matches to be declared ‘Player of the Championship’.

Soon, National Institute of Sports in Patiala adopted him under an appropriate scheme. He honed his skills for nearly four years under coach Inderjit Singh Gill before moving to Air India Academy in Delhi in 1998. He was in the Air India Academy for three years, under the tutelage of coach A.K. Bansal. While in the Academy, he was enrolled in the renowned educational institution, Jamia Milia Islamia. During this period he toured Australia as a part of the Combined Universities hockey team. It was the first offshore outing for Prabhjot who in the latter years would undertake half a dozen tours every year.

In 1999, on a specific request, the Indian Hockey Federation selected three players for a short stint at the Indian Gymkhana Club in London. Prabhjot was one among them. He earned his Junior India cap during the 1999 Holland tour under coach C.R. Kumar. He earned his India colours the same year as a member of the team that played in the Barcelona 4-Nation Cup. On the domestic front, he joined the Indian Oil Corporation in 2000, as a high profile officer. It was the year the only Indian company in the Fortune 500 list started a hockey team of its own. This team under the coaching of A.K. Bansal clinched the prestigious Nehru Cup the same year. Prabhjot won many accolades in domestic hockey like the Best Player epithet in 200 Beighton Cup and Bombay Gold Cup in 2002.

In the aftermath of India’s disastrous Sydney Olympics campaign, a search for a genuine left winger started. Cedric D’Souza, who was just then recalled for the national coaching, set his eyes on the up and coming Prabhjot Singh. Cedric was proved correct and the rural boy rose to his expectation. Under the Cedric-C.R. Kumar duo, Prabhjot saw action in the Prime Minister Gold Cup in Dhaka and Test series against Malaysia and New Zealand.
With so much experience at senior level, Prabhjot played in the Hobart Junior World Cup. He scored five vital goals there including the first goal in the final against Argentina. Regarding the Hobart success, he said, “It was a thrilling moment. We were on the moon. It was the best day in my life.”

The Junior World Cup was a big stage and it provided ample proof of Prabhjot’s progress. He evolved into an attacking winger, with speed and opportunism in front of goal as his forte. His speed off the mark and courage has made him an ideal choice for the 4-men defence wall during the penalty corner defence. Veteran hockey watcher and writer Bruce Hamilton, who reported the 2001 Hobart Junior World Cup, later told hockey year book author K. Arumugam, “ I consider Prabhjot the best winger I have ever seen”. Prabhjot needed no better recognition than this. As a result of such consistent performances, an eminent group of global journalists chose Prabhjot twice as one of the nominees for the coveted ` FIH Young Player of the Year Award’ — in 2001 and again in 2002.

By now, Prabhjot firmly established himself in the senior team. No senior Indian team after 2001 left the shores without him on the ranks. In the training camps, he runs the fastest in 60m sprints. National coach Rajinder Singh even uses him down in the left flank with effective gains. His scoring prowess too improved, bordering on the spectacular. Some of the goals he scored off the passes from play makers Dharaj Pillay and Baljit Singh Dhillon were simply amazing. So much so his style of celebration, raising his fist to the sky after scoring became a frequent and established image in the minds of millions of television watchers. Prabhjot was a super hit at Hyderabad during the first Afro-Asian Games where India won its fourth gold in 2003.
An attacking player, Prabhjot works hard to improve his skills. Speed is his forte. No wonder he considers nippy Pol Amat of Spain as his role model and tries to emulate his fast runs and subtle dodges. Playing good hockey and improving his game each and every day are the main motivating factors of his career.

For the other details of him, visit Profiles section
Source: Top Hockey Stars 2004 published by Field Hockey Publications