Gurjit Kaurਗੁਰਜੀਤ ਕੌਰ

Gurjit Kaur is an Indian field hockey defender and drag-flicker from Miadi Kalan village in Amritsar district, Punjab. She is best known for the penalty corner goal against Australia that took India to its first ever Olympic semi-final in women's hockey at Tokyo 2020, and she was named the FIH Women's Player of the Year for 2020-21.

Early life

Gurjit Kaur was born on 25 October 1995 in Miadi Kalan, a small village in Amritsar district, into a farming family. Her parents, Satnam Singh and Harjinder Kaur, had two daughters, Gurjit and her elder sister Pradeep Kaur, and they were determined that both girls would get a good education.

The village had no hockey tradition, and as a child Gurjit did not know the game at all. Her parents first sent the two sisters to a private school in Ajnala, about 13 kilometres away, because they did not want them in the village government school. Their father fitted both girls onto his bicycle, rode them to school, and waited there all day to bring them home.

That routine could not last. In 2006, when Gurjit was ten, her parents sent both daughters to a boarding school more than 70 kilometres away in Kairon, in Tarn Taran district. The move was made for their schooling, but it changed the course of Gurjit's life, because Kairon was one of Punjab's oldest and best known nurseries for women's hockey.

Finding hockey at Kairon

At Kairon, Gurjit saw hockey for the first time. She knew nothing about the game, so for a long while she simply spent the day watching the other girls play. Watching turned into wanting to play, and playing turned into a passion that stayed with her.

The sisters did well enough at the game to earn places in the government wing of the school, which meant free education and free meals. For parents who farmed a small holding, that support mattered as much as the hockey itself.

Gurjit stayed at Kairon until 2011. She then moved to Lyallpur Khalsa College for Women in Jalandhar, where she continued her studies and her training, and where she began to take drag-flicking seriously. After college she joined the Indian Railways as a junior clerk in Allahabad, a job that gave her a livelihood while she chased a place in the national team.

Breaking into the India team

Gurjit was first called to the senior national camp in 2014, and she made her India debut against Malaysia that year. She did not hold on to a place straight away. It was only in 2017 that she became a permanent member of the Indian team, playing in a test series in Canada in March, the Hockey World League Round 2 in April, and the World League semi-finals in July.

What set her apart was the drag-flick, the low, powerful shot from a penalty corner that is a team's most reliable way of scoring. India's Dutch head coach Sjoerd Marijne encouraged her to change her stick because the one she used felt too light to give her power. The new stick made her flicks stronger, and Marijne also arranged for her to work with the Dutch coach Toon Siepman on the basics of the skill, her posture and her footwork.

Her breakthrough came at the 2017 Asia Cup in Gifu, Japan. India won the title and qualified for the 2018 World Cup, and Gurjit finished as the tournament's third highest scorer with eight goals, the most by any Indian player. She scored a hat-trick against Kazakhstan in the quarter-final and two goals against defending champions Japan in the semi-final.

She carried that form into the next two years. At the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, India finished fourth, but Gurjit caught the eye with two penalty corner goals in a 4-1 win over Malaysia. She was part of the side that reached a first ever World Cup quarter-final in London in 2018, and in 2019 she was the leading scorer at the FIH Women's Series Finals in Hiroshima, where India won gold. Later that year she played in the Olympic qualifiers in Bhubaneswar, where India beat the United States 6-5 on aggregate to book a place at Tokyo.

What happened at Tokyo 2020?

India started the Tokyo Olympics badly, losing their first three group matches, and Gurjit's penalty corners were not going in. In the group stage India won 32 penalty corners in five matches and converted only one, off a rebound. Her flicks had pace but kept finding the goalkeeper or the defenders, and her poor conversion rate became a talking point.

The quarter-final against Australia changed everything. Australia were among the favourites, and India had never reached an Olympic semi-final. In the 22nd minute Gurjit stepped up to a penalty corner and this time her flick found the net. India won 1-0, and a team that had started the tournament with three defeats was suddenly one win from a medal. She said afterwards that drag-flicking was her job, and that she had simply done it: "My job is to drag-flick, and I got a chance, which I converted."

She scored again in the semi-final against Argentina, but India lost 2-1. In the bronze medal match against Great Britain she scored twice more, yet India lost 4-3 and finished fourth. Four goals in the knockout rounds, after none in the group stage, made her the story of India's campaign, and the fourth place finish remains the best result in the history of Indian women's hockey at the Olympics.

Medals and honours

Gurjit's medal record with India covers almost every tournament in Asia. She won gold at the Asia Cup in 2017 and bronze at the Asia Cup in 2022, silver at the Asian Games in Jakarta in 2018, and bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022. She also has a silver medal from the 2018 Asian Champions Trophy, gold from the 2022 FIH Nations Cup in Spain, and gold from the 2016 South Asian Games in Guwahati.

Her highest individual honour came on 6 October 2021, when she was named the FIH Women's Player of the Year for 2020-21. The award covered the period from January 2020 to the end of the Tokyo Olympics, and the voting took in national associations, fans and players, and the media. In January 2022 she reached another milestone, completing 100 international caps during the Asia Cup in Muscat, in the semi-final against Korea. Her listed international record stands at 137 caps and 86 goals for India.

Later career and legacy

In the years since Tokyo, Gurjit has kept playing domestic hockey, including for the Railways, while working towards a return to the national side. The competition for places in the India team is fierce, and a player who made her name in one Olympic campaign has to earn her place again, but she has spoken of wanting another chance in India colours.

Her legacy is already secure in one respect. Before Tokyo, no Indian women's hockey team had ever reached an Olympic semi-final, and the goal that broke that barrier came from a drag-flick by a girl from a village that had never played hockey. For young players in Punjab's villages, and for girls who start the game late, her story shows that a single skill, practised until it is reliable under pressure, can carry a player to the biggest stage in the sport.