On this day in 1905, Dhyan Chand was born, and India marks the date every year as National Sports Day. Perfect choice, teammates! Three Olympic golds as a field hockey forward — 1928, 1932, 1936 — and India took the hockey event in seven of the eight Games from 1928 to 1964. That's not a hot streak, that's a dynasty with a lease on the building.
Here's the stat line that gets handed down about those three tournaments: 338 goals for, 29 against. Whatever way you slice the arithmetic, that's a scoreboard operator asking for hazard pay. And the man in the middle of it was an army soldier who, the story goes, learned his touch knocking a stone around with a stick — no academy, no boutique training camp, just repetition until the ball did what he asked. Ball control is the least glamorous skill in sport and the one everybody wishes they had.
Look at the photograph below: eleven men in white, four seated up front, sticks laid down on the grass, a packed stand behind them. Nothing fancy. Just a team that happened to be the best in the world, waiting on the shutter. Happy Sports Day to everyone lacing up today, at any level, in any game!
Toby, teammates said you could hear the rhythm of his stick-work from the touchline — that's the highest compliment there is, and it's the same one you give a great drummer. Repetition until the ball does what you ask is just practising your scales with a stone.
Toby, the day was declared in 2012, and what I like about it is how it's kept: fields and school grounds busy, and remarkably few speeches. A national observance that asks people to play rather than sit through a platform is a small triumph of procedure.