Historic Sudhar’s hockey story told

Prabhjot Singh

Tribune News Service

Sudhar, a historic town about 20 km from Ludhiana with a population of around 6,000, invariably remains in news more as major education hub of the Malwa belt than a sports nursery. Its recent accolades have surprisingly come in soccer than hockey in which the town has a long and distinguished history. It continues to have good hockey players, both in its school and college teams.

Balkar Singh Bajwa, a javelin thrower of yesteryears, who after retiring as principal from Sudhar, has taken upon himself the onerous task of tracing hockey roots of the town where he spent 36 glorious years of his life.

He has come out with an illustrated book on hockey stars of Sudhar, tracing the origin, rise and growth of hockey in the town that was visited by the sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind. It is why most of the education institutions, including a postgraduate degree college, an institute of pharmacy, college of education and a senior secondary public school, are named after the sixth Guru.

Legend goes that Guru Hargobind gave his shoes to Bhai Jawanda ji for wearing, who kept them as a valued gift. His descendants still have those shoes and people from all over Punjab and India visit Sudhar to see those shoes and seek blessings.

It is Sudhar that produced Olympian Jaswant Singh Gill besides a large number of national and state level players. Two of other outstanding players of this town – Darshan Singh Gill (stand by for Mexico Olympic games) and Avtar Singh Ghuman (reserve for the 1971 World Cup in Barcelona) just missed donning national colours.

Three times Olympic gold medallist Balbir Singh Senior in a message to Balkar Singh Bajwa not only appreciates his long research effort in compiling this book but also acknowledges the association of his one time contemporary in world hockey, Tochy Sandhu of Tanzania, who officiated in a number of Olympic games. Tochy Sandhu had been a student of Sardara Singh, a physical education teacher in the Sudhar School. Sardara Singh has been credited as a missionary as most of outstanding hockey players of both pre and post-partition periods were his trainees.

Balkar Singh, though an athlete, also had a great passion for hockey and he even dabbled his hand in the stick and ball game on the playfields of the college from where he got his degree in education and later served the college for more than three decades.

Balkar Singh Sandhu has written about some of the outstanding hockey players, including Sardara Singh, Sukhdev Singh Gill, Harnek Singh Gill, Ajaib Singh Gill, Bant Singh Gill, Bant Singh Gill, Darshan Singh Gill, and also Karamjit Singh Brar.

Interestingly, Balkar Singh Bajwa, who took to computers only after retiring from the academics, did use the information highways and various search engines to trace many of heroes of yesteryears before mentioning them in the book. He has also gone through the little hockey literature, including biographies, available in the country.