ਅਜੀਤ ਪਾਲ ਸਿੰਘਅਜੀਤ ਪਾਲ ਸਿੰਘ

Ajit Pal Singh is a former Indian field hockey player from Sansarpur, near Jalandhar in Punjab, who captained India to its only Hockey World Cup title at Kuala Lumpur in 1975. A centre half, he played at three Olympic Games, winning bronze medals at Mexico City in 1968 and Munich in 1972.

Early life in Sansarpur

Ajit Pal Singh Kular was born on 1 April 1947 at Sansarpur, a small village near Jalandhar Cantonment in Punjab. Sansarpur was already famous as a breeding ground for hockey stars: the village had been home to a number of international hockey players who had done the nation proud, and a boy growing up there grew up around the game. Ajit Pal was handed a hockey stick by his uncle at the age of seven or eight.

He studied at the Cantonment Board Higher Secondary School in Jalandhar Cantonment, and at the age of 16 he represented the Punjab State Schools hockey team in 1963. In his early days he played at full back, the last line of defence. The move that defined his career came later, at college, when he shifted forward into the centre half position and made it his own.

College hockey, the BSF and the centre half role

In 1964 he moved to Lyallpur Khalsa College in Jalandhar, where he spent four years and led the college to three victories in the Punjab University inter college tournament. It was there that he moved from full back to centre half, the position from which a player links defence and attack, sets the tempo of the game and organises the team around him. He was named captain of the Punjab University hockey team in 1966 and represented the Indian Universities hockey team in 1968.

As a young man he joined the newly raised Border Security Force and captained the BSF hockey team. Under his captaincy the BSF team lifted the Nehru Trophy in 1975, the same year as his World Cup triumph, and he eventually left the force as an Assistant Commandant. Domestic hockey with the BSF ran alongside his international career for years, and he continued playing on the domestic circuit for the force even after his international days ended.

Olympic bronze medals in 1968 and 1972

Ajit Pal was selected in the Indian team that toured Japan in 1966 and played in the pre Olympic tournament in London the following year. His Olympic debut came at Mexico City in 1968, while he was still in college. Recalling those Games to Hockey India years later, he said he had been the youngest player at the coaching camp and felt lucky to make the squad. After India lost its opening match to New Zealand, he was brought in at centre half against West Germany, helped the team to a 2 to 1 win, and then played every remaining match as India finished with the bronze medal.

At Munich in 1972 he was one of only four players from the Mexico City squad to keep his place. India prepared under coach K. D. Singh Babu, who had captained the 1952 Olympic winning team, and targeted gold, but lost the semi final 2 to 0 to Pakistan. The team recovered to take bronze, which was India's tenth consecutive hockey medal at the Olympic Games. Ajit Pal also played at the Asian Games in Bangkok in 1970 and Tehran in 1974, and captained the Indian squad at a tournament in Singapore in 1971.

Who captained India to the 1975 hockey World Cup?

Ajit Pal Singh did. At the third Hockey World Cup, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he led an Indian team that Hockey India later described as leaving no stone unturned to bring the cup home. India were placed in Group B with West Germany, Australia, England, Argentina and Ghana, and advanced from the pool with three wins, one draw and one defeat. In the semi final India beat the hosts Malaysia 3 to 2, and on 15 March 1975 they met Pakistan in the final.

India won that final 2 to 1, with Ashok Kumar, son of the great Dhyan Chand, scoring the all important winning goal. It remains India's only Hockey World Cup title. The 1975 gold completed a full set of World Cup medals for Ajit Pal in three editions: he had been part of the team that took bronze at the first World Cup in Barcelona in 1971 and silver at Amsterdam in 1973. No other captain has led India to a hockey World Cup title.

Montreal 1976, retirement and work after playing

Ajit Pal also captained India at the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976, where the team fared poorly and finished seventh. After that tournament he retired from international hockey, although he took part in one last international event, the Champions Trophy at Karachi in 1980, and he kept playing domestic hockey for the Border Security Force. His international career had lasted well over a decade, from the Japan tour of 1966 to the end of the 1970s.

He stayed close to the game after playing. He is an organising member of the All India Balwant Singh Kapur Hockey Tournament for the Mata Parkash Kaur Cup, held every year for school boys under 16, a competition that gives young players from hockey playing regions a national stage. In April 2012 the Indian Olympic Association selected him as India's chef de mission for the London 2012 Olympic Games, the first time a sportsperson, rather than a politician or administrator, was given that role. In the event, severe spondylitis prevented him from travelling to London.

Honours and legacy

The Government of India honoured him with the Arjuna Award in 1970, during his playing career, and with the Padma Shri in 1992, the country's fourth highest civilian honour. Those two awards bookend a career built on one position, centre half, played at the highest level for club, force and country, and on one achievement that still stands alone in Indian sport: the World Cup of 1975.

For Sansarpur, his home village near Jalandhar, Ajit Pal is the most celebrated name in a long line of internationals, proof that a village of hockey players could produce the captain who lifted a world title. For Indian hockey, he remains the standard against which captains are measured, because he is still the only one to have brought the World Cup home.