Hockey is one of the favorite sports of India. It was during the Imperial rule that hockey is said to have originated on the Indian soil. It is the National sport of India. Actually the game was introduced during the rule of the British. The first hockey club was established in Calcutta present Kolkatta in the year 1885. Slowly, clubs were established in other places like Punjab and Bombay presently Mumbai. Though Indian hockey was recognised by other countries, it was the 1928 Olympics which was held in Amsterdam, that brought the Indian hockey team into limelight. Indians played extremely well in the tournament and won a thundering victory, in its debut itself. This victory was just the beginning to a glorious future.

The Indian hockey team has created a record of six consecutive wins at the olympics, which has not been broken till date. The legends who contributed to this record are Dhyan Chand, Balbir Singh, Dilip Tirkey and many others. It is to be noted that there were four players with the same name Balbir Singh who have contributed to the success of hockey in India. Among them the first Balbir Singh, reached his zenith when he scored five goals against Netherlands in 1952.

Dyan Chand is another famous hockey player who contributed to Indian hockey. He had hundred and one goals to his credit only from the olympic games and three hundred goals in his account at the other international hockey tournaments. He has set a record that still remains to be beaten. He is popularly called as the “Hockey Wizard”. This legend passed away on the third of december in the year 1979.

As the team was flourishing internationally, the Indian Hockey Federation was formed to administrate the team and the federation took the team to greater heights. Also with the Men’s hockey team, the Indian women’s hockey team was also seeing golden times. They have won the golden medal for threee successful years. The first one came from the commonwealth games held in the year 2002. The second came from the Afro-Asian games conducted in the year 2003 and the third came from the Hockey Asia Cup in the year 2004. A point to be noted here is that the success of the 2002 commonwealth games came as an inspiration to a super hit bollywood movie “Chak De India” in the year 2007.

It was in the year 2008, that Indian Men’s team was beaten by Britain, and this was the first time in the history of Indian hockey that it was not qualified to take part in the olympics. The Indian Women’s team also lost to the United states and were eliminated from the Beijing Olympics 2008. These two disastrous performance, which made a black mark in the history of Indian hockey resulted in the termination of the Indian Hockey Federation.

After all these bad times that Indian hockey went through, the Indian Women’s hockey came with a bang and won the Women’s Champion Challenge II, by defeating Belgium on the 27th of June 2009.