Player sketch: Broome Pinniger

Name: Broome Eric Pinniger
Born: 28 December 1902, in Saharanpur, India
Died: 30 December 1996, in Edinburgh, Scotland
Position: Centre half
Olympic journey: 1928 Amsterdam, 1932 Los Angeles
Medals: Two gold

On the field, as his position suggests, Broome Eric Pinniger was the fulcrum of the All-India teams that won the Olympic hockey competition in 1928 and 1932. Off the field he was at the centre of controversies over the choice of captain on both occasions.

In Amsterdam in 1928, Pinniger stood in as captain for the crucial last league match against Switzerland and the final against hosts Holland after regular captain Jaipal Singh left the team in a huff. One possible reason for Jaipal Singh’s sudden departure was that he “was victim of a conspiracy hatched by the dominating Anglo-Indian group in the team who had the backing of the Englishmen controlling Indian hockey at that time.” [M.L. Kapur, Romance of Hockey (Ambala Cantt: M.L. Kapur, 1968), 276.] Pinniger was the designated vice-captain of the team, having led the Punjab in the preceding Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta. The Oxford-educated Jaipal Singh was in England when the Inter-Provincial was held and did not take part.

In 1932, after another Inter-Provincial Tournament-cum-Olympics selection trials in Calcutta, Pinniger was once again passed over for the captaincy, which was offered to his Punjab teammate Lal Shah Bokhari. Pinniger responded by saying he would decline the invitation to go to Los Angeles with the Indian Olympic team.

The Calcutta newspaper The Statesman, gleefully reported the clash between two Punjab players. “In an interview Pinniger explained that he had no resentment against Lal Shah personally or racially, but what he quarrelled with was the principle of the selection,” the newspaper's correspondent wrote from Allahabad two days after the Inter-Provincial tournament. “If either (Richard James) Allen or (Leslie Charles) Hammond, or any other member of the Olympic team of 1928, Indian or Anglo-Indian, had been selected, he would have made no protest, but he could not understand the appointment of a player in such a responsible position who has not had experience for such an important tour.” [The Statesman, 17 March 1932, 11.] Dhyan Chand was the other player from the 1928 team to retain his place for the 1932 Olympics, but Pinniger pointedly did not mention him by name in his alternatives for the captain’s position.

Pinniger was later persuaded to change his mind and he played in the Los Angeles Olympics. However, his outburst against Lal Shah cost him the vice-captaincy. Assistant manager Pankaj Gupta convened a formal meeting of the players for electing the vice-captain on board the N. Y. K. Haruna Maru on the night of June 13, 1932, hours before the ship reached Kobe in Japan on way to Los Angeles. “Three names were proposed—Pinninger, Allen and Hammond,” wrote Dhyan Chand in his autobiography Goal! “A vote was taken which resulted in Allen getting 9 votes, Pinniger 5 votes and Hammond 1.” Pinniger clearly did not get all the ‘Anglo-Indian’ votes, because there were eight of them in the squad. Dhyan Chand’s name was not proposed for the captaincy.

Pinniger opted out of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin when Dhyan Chand was chosen captain. The reasons proffered included injury, failure to get leave from his job at the North West Railway and political hassle. [S. Muthiah and Harry MacLure, The Anglo-Indians: A 500-Year History (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2013), 167; Kapur, Romance of Hockey, 288; “Hockey legend honoured: 81 and going strong,” The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.] However, there is a brief epilogue to Pinniger’s Olympic story. After the Indians suffered a shock defeat to the Germans in one of the warm-up matches on July 17, 1936, the team management lost confidence in centre half M.A.K. Massood and also decided they needed an inside right. “That same night Gupta rushed to Berlin and sent a cable to Kunwar Sir Jagdish Prasad, president of the IHF, asking him to send (A.I.S.) Dara, failing whom Frank Wells or Eric Henderson, and also Pinniger,” wrote Dhyan Chand in Goal! Dara flew out of India and reached Berlin just before the semi-finals, but Pinniger never did go.

In his playing days, Pinniger was famous enough for hockey sticks bearing his autograph to be sold widely, though he never received a penny, he claimed in a newspaper interview in 1984, because it would have cost him his amateur status. [The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.]

Pinniger was thought of as the best centre half of his time and on his day he could even bottle up Dhyan Chand, as he did during the replayed semi-final between the Punjab and the United Provinces at the first Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta in 1928.

Pinniger was also good at other sports. In 1919, he reportedly “won one of the Empire’s top shooting awards, the Viceroy’s Cup, which, had India sent a team to Antwerp the following year, would certainly have qualified him.” [The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.] He won the victor ludorum, or Games Winners’ award from the 1934 Western Asian Games. After 1936, while still at the peak of his powers as a hockey player, Pinniger is known to have taken up tennis. [Kapur, Romance of Hockey, 288.]

Broome Eric Pinniger was the second of three children born to Broome Pinniger and Grace Ethel Thomas. [Family trees featuring Broome Eric Pinniger in Ancestry.co.uk.] He studied at Oak Grove School in Mussoorie. [The Statesman, 8 March 1928, 13.] He joined the North West Railway in 1925 [The Statesman, 13 March 1932] and was probably based in Lahore in 1932 (Ancestry.com. California, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008). He is known to have played for North West Railway, the Punjab Hockey Association, the Delhi Rangers Club and the Ghaziabad Sports Club.[The Statesman, 8 March 1928, 13.]

Pinniger stayed back in Pakistan after Partition and in 1949 returned to Scotland, from where his grandparents had gone to India at the time of the mutiny (or the First War of Independence, as it is referred to in India) in 1857. [The Glasgow Herald, 9 February 1984, 17.] He was married to Florence Wilhelmina Ross.

*The post was edited on October 8, 2014 to substitute the term "mutiny" for India's First War of Independence; the article in The Glasgow Herald referred to in the post uses that term to describe the events of 1857.

Player sketch: William Goodsir-Cullen

Name: William James Goodsir-Cullen
Born: March 29, 1907, in Firozpur, the Punjab, India
Died: June 15, 1994, in Wyoming, New South Wales, Australia
Position: Left half/right half
Olympics journey: 1928 Amsterdam
Medals: One gold

William James Goodsir-Cullen and his younger brother Ernest John probably learnt their hockey on the "top flat", the biggest playing field of St George’s College in Mussoorie. Their uncle, George Masterson, was a patrician brother at St Fidelis School, which shared the location with St George's College. ‘Uncle George’ was keen on sport, famously roaming the surrounding hills with his gun during hunting season. (Source: family information.) The Goodsir-Cullens were probably still too young to go hunting, but they were old enough to pick up hockey sticks. The brothers bagged a rich haul at the Olympics, William winning gold with the All-India team in Amsterdam in 1928 and Ernest emulating him in Berlin in 1936. They are second only to the most famous brothers of Indian hockey before Independence—Dhyan Chand and Roop Singh.

The Goodsir Cullens were the younger branch of the Blake Cullen family from the West of Ireland. There was a lot of movement back and forward to India over the years. The first Cullen known to have been in India was William James’s great grandfather Valentine Blake Cullen, a cavalryman who went out to the country with the East India Company probably sometime in the 1830s. His son, John, married Susannah Isabella Goodsir and they had two sons, John Blake Cullen and James Goodsir Cullen (Wiliam James's father). (Source: family information.)

William James, or “Willie”, was already reckoned one of the finest half-backs in the country when he helped the United Provinces win the Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta in 1928 and won himself a place in the Olympics-bound team (The Statesman, March 8, 1928, page 13). He played three matches in Amsterdam, including the final where he had to play in the unaccustomed position of outside left as an injury-ravaged India reshuffled their forward line. India still managed to beat hosts Holland 3-0 and clinch their first Olympic gold.

Willie Goodsir-Cullen played for the Telegraph Recreation Clubs of Calcutta and Agra, where he was based. In 1926 and 1927 he won the Gwalior Gold Cup with the Agra Telegraph Club (The Statesman, March 8, 1928, page 13). The list of incoming passengers at the Port of London on March 30, 1928 put his name down as William James Cullen and said he was employed by the Imperial Telegraphic Department (Ancestry.com. UK, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008). He married Monica Agnes Pearson, daughter to Elof Pearson (originally Persson), in Rawalpindi on May 9, 1934. (Source: family information; also Ancestry.com. India, Select Marriages, 1792-1948 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.)

In 1947, weeks before India's independence, William and Monica, along with their three children, immigrated to Canada; they sailed from Bombay on the American President Lines' SS Marine Adder on July 1, 1947 and arrived, in transit, at San Fransisco on July 28, 1947. In the list of passengers, William James Goodsir-Cullen's occupation was given as "military", race Irish and final destination Vancouver, Canada. The whole family's passage was paid for by the Indian Government. (Ancestry.com. California, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.)

William James Goodsir-Cullen later moved to Australia (source: family information).

*The post was edited on October 10, 2014 to include information on the Goodsir-Cullens' immigration to Canada and, later on, to Australia.

Player sketch: Leslie Hammond

Name: Leslie Charles Hammond
Born: March 4, 1905 in Madras, India
Died: June 26, 1955, in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
Position: Left back
Olympic journey: 1928 Amsterdam, 1932 Los Angeles
Medals: Two gold

The tall defender might not have got a game in the 1928 Olympics if the captain, Jaipal Singh, had better travel plans, or not left the team in a huff after a spat with the management just before the final league match. Hammond and Jaipal were both contenders to the left back position and it was the former who made it his own. Hammond played three matches out of five in the Amsterdam Games as part of a defence that did not concede a goal in the whole tournament.

In the process he also improved his game. The tall defender had been described as ‘thoroughly safe’ but ‘certainly slow’ after his selection to the All-India team following the 1928 Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta, where he had played for the eventual champions, United Provinces (The Statesman, March 8, 1928, page 13). Four years later, Hammond was one of only four players who retained their places for the 1932 Olympics (the others were Richard James Allen, Broome Eric Pinniger and Dhyan Chand). By then Hammond was being praised not only for his height and reach, but also for his ability to cover ground quickly with long legs.

“Europe voted him among the best backs in the world when he played for India in the (1928) Olympic Games,” wrote The Statesman on March 13, 1932. He kept up the good work in Los Angeles.

One of seven siblings, Leslie Charles Hammond was born to William Charles Hammond and his second wife, Mary Jane Street, in Madras (Mundia.com. Profile and family tree of Leslie Charles Hammond). The baptism record of Leslie Charles Hammond on April 9, 1905 in Madras, India, gives his mother’s name simply as ‘Mary’ (Ancestry.com. India, Select Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014). He probably studied at Oak Grove School in Mussoorie (Anglos in the Wind, 5, no. 20, page 38) before joining La Martiniere in Lucknow (1917-1920). There is also evidence to suggest that Leslie Charles Hammond and his two younger brothers, Gerald Hammond and Basil John Hammond, were in St Francis College in Lucknow in 1921 (Mundia.com. Sources for profile of Leslie Charles Hammond).

Hammond worked for the East Indian Railway and played in its hockey team (The Statesman, March 13, 1932). He got married to Charlotte Ann Vincent, daughter to Joseph John Vincent, at the St Paul’s Church in Dilkusha, Lucknow, on November 15, 1934. Charlotte Ann Vincent was nineteen at the time (Ancestry.com. India, Select Marriages, 1792-1948 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014). In the marriage certificate, Leslie Hammond’s occupation is given as Chargeman, Carriage Wagon Works, E.I. Railway ((Mundia.com. Sources for profile of Leslie Charles Hammond).

Leslie Hammond later immigrated to Australia.

Tanned diabolical jugglers

Field hockey was reintroduced in the Olympics after an eight-year hiatus in 1928. The hockey tournament was held in May, while the Games were held in July. British India sent a hockey team to the Olympics for the first time and in Amsterdam the team was joined by eight other countries. The nine participating countries were divided into two divisions, with round robin leagues deciding the top two teams in each division. The winners of divisions A and B played each other in the final and the second-placed teams faced off for bronze. India, Denmark, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland played in division A; Germany, Holland, France and Spain in division B.

Here's a match-by-match breakdown of the All-India hockey team's journey to its maiden Olympic gold. Fourteen players had mesmerised the world in Amsterdam, prompting one Dutch journalist to describe them as “tanned diabolical jugglers.” After watching the Indians play, this unnamed journalist had written: “This is no longer the game of hockey. It is a juggling turn. It is splendid.”

The Ninth Olympiad: Amsterdam 1928

(Back row, from left) Richard James Allen, Maurice/Michael Gateley, Leslie Charles Hammond, Dhyan Chand, Broome Eric Pinniger, George E. Marthins, William James Goodsir-Cullen; (front row, from left) Richard A. Norris, Michael E. Rocque, Shaukat Ali, Frederick Seaman. Absent: Jaipal Singh, Kher/Kehr Singh, S.M. Yusuf, Feroze Khan. Source: http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/granthalaya/goal/

India squad:
Richard James Allen, Michael E. Rocque, Leslie Charles Hammond, Richard A. Norris, Broome Eric Pinniger, William James Goodsir-Cullen, Maurice/Michael Gateley , Shaukat Ali, Dhyan Chand, George E. Marthins, Frederick Seaman, Jaipal Singh, S.M. Yusuf, Feroze Khan.
* Kher/Kehr Singh Gill was in the squad but did not play a single match in the Olympics owing to a knee injury.

17 May 1928: Division A: League match: India Vs. Austria

India XI: Richard James Allen; Michael E. Rocque, Leslie Charles Hammond; R.A. Norris, Broome Eric Pinniger, William James Goodsir-Cullen; M.A. Gateley, A. Shaukat, Dhyan Chand, G.E. Marthins, F.S. Seaman.
Result: India 6 (Dhyan Chand 4; A. Shaukat 1, M. Gateley 1) Austria 0
Notes:
i. India played their first ever match in the Olympics without their captain, Jaipal Singh.
ii. India scored three goals in each half. Dhyan Chand scored the first four, according to a report published in The Statesman on 19 May 1928 (page 11).

18 May 1928: Division A: League Match: India Vs. Belgium
India XI: Richard James Allen; Michael E. Rocque, Jaipal Singh; R.A. Norris, Broome Eric Pinniger, S. M. Yusuf; A. Shaukat, F.U. Khan, Dhyan Chand, G.E. Marthins, F.S. Seaman.
Result: India 9 (F.U. Khan 5; G.E. Marthns 1; F.S. Seaman 2; Dhyan Chand 1) Belgium 0
Notes:
i. Three changes in the team: Jaipal Singh played his first match, replacing Hammond; Yusuf replaced Goodsir-Cullen at left-half; Feroze Khan replaced Gateley but played inside right while Shaukat Ali moved to right wing.
ii. India led five-nil at the break, according to a report published in The Statesman on 20 May 1928 (page 11).

20 May 1928: Division A: League Match: India Vs. Denmark
India XI: Richard James Allen; Michael E. Rocque, Jaipal Singh; R.A. Norris, Broome Eric Pinniger, S.M. Yusuf; A. Shaukat, F.U. Khan, Dhyan Chand, G.E. Marthins, F.S. Seaman.
Result: India 5 (Dhyan Chand 4; F.S. Seaman 1) Switzerland 0
Notes:
i. No changes in the team, a fact corroborated by Dhyan Chand’s autobiography; however, a Reuters report published in The Statesman on 22 May 1928 (page 12) said Hammond and Shaukat Ali replaced Rocque and Gateley, ‘both slightly injured’. This seems inaccurate. According to the official Olympic report and Dhyan Chand's autobiography, Shaukat Ali had played both previous matches and held his place against Denmark, while Gateley had been replaced by Feroze Khan against Belgium. No corroboration found for Hammond’s participation in this game.
ii. Feroze Khan broke his collar-bone in a collision with an opponent in the middle of the first half and retired, said the Reuters report published in The Statesman on 22 May 1928 (page 12). He would play no further part in the tournament.

22 May 1928: Division A: League Match: India Vs. Switzerland
India XI: Richard James Allen; Leslie Charles Hammond, Michael E. Rocque; William James Goodsir-Cullen, Broome Eric Pinniger, R.A. Norris; S.M. Yusuf, M.A. Gateley, Dhyan Chand, G.E. Marthins, F.S. Seaman.
Result: India 6 (Dhyan Chand 3, Gateley 2, Marthins 1) Switzerland 0
Notes:
i. The line-up given in the official Olympic report seems to have swapped right and left players at back and half-back.
ii. Three changes in the team: Hammond back after two games, replacing Jaipal Singh (but did Hammond swap places with Rocque?); Goodsir-Cullen and Gateley replaced Shaukat Ali and the injured Feroze Khan—Goodsir-Cullen slotted into half-back (but did he swap places with Norris?), forcing Yusuf to move up to Shaukat Ali’s position on right wing; Gateley played inside right in place of Feroze.
iii. Sports-reference.com credits Dhyan Chand with four goals and Gateley with only one.

India topped Division A by winning all four Group League matches and qualified for the final where they would meet Holland, the winners of Division B.

26 May 1928: Final: India Vs. Holland
India XI: Richard James Allen; Michael E. Rocque, Leslie Charles Hammond; R.A. Norris, Broome Eric Pinniger, S.M. Yusuf; M.A. Gateley, G.E. Marthins, Dhyan Chand, F.S. Seaman, William James Goodsir-Cullen.
Result: India 3 (Dhyan Chand 2; Marthins 1) Holland 0
Note:
i. No changes in personnel, but positions were shuffled: Yusuf went back to left half; Gateley pushed to right wing, as in the first match of the tournament, and Marthins moved from inside left to inside right; Seaman moved to inside left from left wing; Goodsir-Cullen played on left wing instead of his customary position at left half.

* The Official Olympic report has been used as the primary source of information on team-related matters. Wherever possible, the facts have been checked against other sources, including contemporary newspaper reports, books and articles published later and databases for Olympics-related statistics. Contradictions as well as corroborations have been noted. You may find variant spellings of certain names, though usually it is possible to make out who is being mentioned.

Player sketch: Richard Allen

Name: Richard James Allen
Born: 4 June 1902, in Nagpur, India 
Died: 1969, in Bangalore, Karnataka, India 
Position: Goalkeeper
Olympic journey: 1928 Amsterdam, 1932 Los Angeles, 1936 Berlin
Medals: Two gold, or three gold?

For a goalkeeper who was rarely beaten, this could be the story of one that got away. Allen was the only Indian player other than Dhyan Chand to be selected for three consecutive Olympics before Independence, but there is reason to doubt if he played an active part in the triumph in Los Angeles in 1932. 

Be what it may, the goalkeeper renowned for his splendid eye, fine sense of anticipation and quick thinking was a certainty in the national team between 1928 and 1936. Allen caught the eye with some ‘absolutely uncanny’ displays for Bengal that helped the hosts reach the final of the inaugural Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta in February 1928 (The Statesman, 8 March 1928, page 13). The meet doubled as selection trial for the Olympic hockey tournament that was to be held in Amsterdam in May. Allen repaid the selectors’ faith in Amsterdam, keeping a clean sheet in all five matches as India won their first Olympic gold.

In Berlin in 1936, Allen played four matches and was beaten only once, when hosts Germany got a consolation goal in the final. India won the final 8-1 to complete a hattrick of Olympic gold medals before the Second World War stopped the Games for twelve years.

Dhyan Chand picked Allen in goal in his best Indian XI drawn from among those he played with or saw play. “The goalkeepers today in the country, in my opinion, are not a patch on the goalkeepers of the past, particularly our great goalkeeper R. J. Allen...,” Dhyan Chand wrote in his autobiography serialised in the weekly Sport and Pastime between May 1949 and January 1951. 

A certain James Richard Allen, born to John James Allen and Catherina, was baptised in Nagpur on June 19, 1902 (Ancestry.com. India, Select Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014). The birth date was given as 4 June 1902, which matches goalkeeper Allen’s date of birth in the Olympic database. Allen probably learnt the game in the northern hill town of Mussoorie, while studying at the Oak Grove School (Anglos in the Wind, 5, no. 20, page 38).  Afterwards he was at St Joseph’s College in Naini Tal. He decided early to become a specialist goalkeeper and never played in any other position. He joined the Calcutta Port Commissioners team in 1921 and played in the junior divisions till 1926 (The Statesman, 13 March 1932), after which he never looked back.

The mystery of the missing goalkeeper

On 11 August 1932 at the Olympic Stadium in Los Angeles, the Indian hockey team slammed 24 goals past the hapless hosts. Astonishingly, the United States managed to pull one back. Their lone goal, story has it, was scored while the Indian goalkeeper was busy signing autographs for spectators!

Authenticity is not the point of the story; capturing the essence of a hopelessly uneven contest is. Imagination paints a game played mostly in the opposition half, the bored goalkeeper, the fawning fans, the unexpected attack on an unguarded goal and, perhaps, a desperate scramble to get back into position. It is important to know the identity of the Indian goalkeeper who inspired the story. Was it the first-choice, Richard James Allen, who could be beaten, the story would suggest, only if he was not there? Allen had conceded none in five matches in the previous Olympics in Amsterdam and would let in only one goal in four matches in the next Olympics in Berlin. Or was it the maverick, Arthur Charles Hind, who could play practically in any position, including centre half and centre forward? A man easily bored, one suspects.

Intertwined with this is another question: did Allen play any active part in the 1932 Games? Before India’s Independence, Allen was the only player other than Dhyan Chand to be sent to three consecutive Olympics between 1928 and 1936. India won each time. But did Allen win three gold medals, or did a strained muscle in Los Angeles cost him one?

The prohibitive cost of sending a team to the United States meant no European country took part in the hockey competition in Los Angeles. To ensure hockey remained an Olympic sport (it had been reintroduced in 1928 after an eight-year hiatus), defending champions India sent a team on borrowed money to Los Angeles where they were joined by Olympic debutants Japan and the United States.

The three teams played each other in a round robin league. Thus India had only two opportunities to give a game to each member of their squad of fifteen—an important tactical move designed to ensure everyone became eligible for a medal (with no substitutions allowed in those days, each player had to start in at least one game). This is where the confusion arises: the official report of the Tenth Olympiad in Los Angeles in 1932 shows India played the same XI against Japan and the USA—Arthur Charles Hind; Carlyle Carrol Tapsell, Leslie Charles Hammond; Masude Ali Khan Minhas, Broome Eric Pinniger, S. Lal Shah Bokhari; Richard John Carr, Gurmit Singh Kullar, Dhyan Chand, Roop Singh, Sayed Mohd Jaffar—and accordingly the medals tally does not include the names of Richard James Allen, Frank Gerald Brewin, William Patrick Sullivan and Mohammad Sirdar Aslam (spellings as in official report).

In those day it was unusual for India to field the same team in subsequent matches and deny the rest of the squad members a chance to win a medal; in two Olympics either side of Los Angeles only one Indian hockey player did not play a single match despite being in the squad—the unfortunate Kher Singh Gill who missed the entire 1928 Games because of an injured knee. And there is evidence that contradicts the official report of the 1932 Games.

Dhyan Chand’s autobiography, Goal! serialised in the weekly sports magazine, Sport and Pastime, between May 1949 and January 1951 and later published as a book by Sport and Pastime from Madras in 1952 gives the following Indian XI in the matches in Los Angeles:

Against Japan, on August 4: Allen; Tapsell, Hammond; Masud Minhas, Pinniger, Lal Shah; Dickie Carr, Gurmit Singh, Dhyan Chand, Roop Singh, Jaffar. India won 11-1.

This tallies with the Olympic report, except the presence of Allen in place of Hind in goal. Sports-reference.com, a sports statistics website, also says Allen played against Japan. However, a report on the match by the Special Correspondent of The Statesman that appeared in the Calcutta-based newspaper on August 6 corroborated the Olympic report and said Hind played in goal instead of Allen, who was from Calcutta. The report is in keeping with a preview of the match carried in the same newspaper on August 4 that said Allen had a strained muscle and would not play against Japan.

Dhyan Chand’s XI against USA, on August 11: Hind; Tapsell, Aslam; Brewin, Pinniger, Lal Shah; Sullivan, Gurmit Singh, Dhyan Chand, Roop Singh, Jaffar. India won 24-1.

If correct this would clear up the confusion about Aslam, Brewin and Sullivan’s participation in the Games (the explanation being: the official Olympic report printed the same XI twice by mistake and missed these names), but what of Allen? Did Dhyan Chand get the goalkeeper wrong twice? Should it have been Hind in the first game and Allen in the second?

Dhyan Chand in his autobiography, written nearly two decades after the events in Los Angeles, is curiously insistent that Allen played against Japan. Apart from the team line-up, Allen’s name is mentioned twice more in Dhyan Chand’s description of the game. “I cannot explain why and how the lone goal was scored against us, and how, of all the persons, a goalkeeper like Allen was beaten,” Dhyan Chand writes. He later adds, “The solitary goal of Japan was scored in the second half—Inochora, their outside-left, converted a penalty corner with a shot that surprised our defenders. It was a quick flick, and just entered the net between Allen, and as far as I can remember, Tapsell.”

Were Dhyan Chand and his editors at Sports and Pastime aware of the exclusion of Allen and three others from the medals tally of the official Olympic report? Were they trying to set the record straight? The impression is strengthened by another sentence found later in the chapter: “In the two matches in the Olympic Games, all our 15 players took part, which qualified them for the Olympic gold medal, and we all felt happy over it.”

To borrow a term from another game, Dhyan Chand was still batting for his teammates, twenty years after Los Angeles. Unfortunately, until the confusion about the Indian line-up in the two games in 1932 is cleared up, the names of Richard James Allen, Frank Gerald Brewin, William Patrick Sullivan and Mohammad Sirdar Aslam will continue to go missing from the official medals tally of the Los Angeles Olympics.

Player sketch: Michael Rocque

Name: Michael E. Rocque
Born: 1899
Died: ?
Position: Right back
Olympic journey: 1928 Amsterdam
Medals: One gold

Little is known about the defender who featured in every match played by India in their first Olympic triumph. He played right back for Central Provinces in the Inter-Provincial Tournament in Calcutta in 1928 when he was selected for the All-India team and then played mostly in the same position in the Ninth Olympiad in Amsterdam, partnering either Leslie Hammond or the captain, Jaipal Singh. India did not concede a single goal in the tournament.

Rocque studied at Christ Church School in Jubbulpore, an important railway town in central India. A versatile player, he played centre forward for Calcutta Telegraph Recreation Club circa 1922. He later played for the Great Indian Peninsula (GIP) Railway in the Aga Khan Tournament in Bombay (The Statesman, 8 March 1928, page 13). The list of incoming passengers when the Kaisir-i-Hind docked at the Tilbury Docks on 30 March 1928 gave Rocque’s profession as “Telegraphist” (Ancestry.com. UK, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008).

“Great things are expected of him,” The Statesman had said before the All-India team left for England on its way to the 1928 Olympics. Rocque did not disappoint, but after the 1928 triumph he disappeared from the stage.