Sundeep Misra - Forgive Me Amma

It is the true story of a super star whose career has been interspersed with brilliant performances and unseemly scenes. It is for the readers to decide whether they want their wards to be crowd-pullers or medal-winners.

Balbir Singh Sr

(triple Olympic gold medallist)

Dhanraj is a character who cannot easily be showcased in a straight-jacket. He is beyond definition, complex, controversial, inexplicably humane on occasions, clearly confounding admirers and critics alike. But in whatever way you look at it, Dhanrajs life and times offer a fascinating insight.

Written with a feeling of anger and anguish without sacrificing details or overstating them, Sundeep has more than succeeded in presenting to the reader a readable, somewhat poignant, but a transparent portrayal of Dhanraj Pillay.

S. Thyagarajan

(Deputy Sports Editor, The Hindu)

The author, Sundeep Misra, whom I have had the privilege and honour of knowing from the beginning of his career, has come up with a complete picture, warts and all, of the mercurial Dhanraj Pillay who has been the pride and joy of Indian hockey. In the process, the highs and lows of Dhanrajs career also reflect the sorry state of Indian hockey which at one time was acknowledged as the national sport of India. Every concerned sports lover in the country knows Indian hockey sure needs a lot of help and commitment from all of us to restore it to its lost glory.

K. Jagannadha Rao

(former Sports Editor, PTI)

Cover Image : Indian hockey player Dhanraj Pillay looks dejected after Indias defeat in the match against the Netherlands in the Olympic Games 2004 in Athens on 14 August, 2004.

Sundeep Misra, 2007

Photographs The Hindu

First published 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the author and the publisher. The views and contents of the book are solely of the author. The publisher may not subscribe to them.

ISBN: 978-81-8328-427-1

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To Tapas Sen and Jyoti Patnaik for always being with me. Do keep watching over me.

Nothing would ever be complete if I were not to pause a bit and salute my father, the man who introduced me to sports, and according to me, was the most stylish batsman I have ever seen. It was he who introduced me to the BBC Sports Round-up in those rocking days of the radio. When most parents were whipping their children to put in an extra hour of studies, my father was ensuring that I heard all the sports reports on the radio.

The first time I saw Dhanraj Pillay was at Gwalior during the National Hockey Championship. In 1988-89, he was thin, dark and no one in the packed stands of the hockey stadium could have ever imagined that this Pune/Mumbai lad would go on to become an absolute legend of the game. He was a very quiet individual and spent his time listening intently to his coach Cedric DSouza at training sessions. After Bombay won the title, beating Punjab in the final, extensive interviews revolved around Cedric DSouza, who had brought a young team and won the National Championship. Dhanraj didnt figure in the scheme of things then.

However, there was one man, a local coach in a school at Gwalior whose name I cant remember now, who told me after watching Dhanraj play that if this boy is groomed and nurtured, he could go on to become one of Indias greatest hockey heroes. I am sure even Cedric never thought that Dhanraj would play hockey at an international level, leave alone play in four Olympics.

With Dhanraj, you can either be a journalist or a friend and this I discovered after the Utrecht World Cup, 1998. My criticism of him for hiding an injury to remain the Indian captain didnt go down well with him. For that bit of freedom that I enjoy as a journalist, he presented me a bouquet of his choicest abuses. But with time, we shook hands and settled matters. Or did we?

Over time I also realised that there can be no one quite like him in the hockey world. Despite the charges levelled against him he manipulates the media, uses emotion as a tool to get his way, has a love-hate relationship with his coaches, constantly demands attention, threatens to quit hockey every year, gets into confrontations with the umpires, is arrogant, doesnt know what to talk and when Dhanraj Pillay emerges as Indias best known hockey player worldwide.

No one, and this I am saying with due respect to all the Olympic gold medal-winners, has kept hockey alive the way this man has. Everybody had done their best from the Indian Hockey Federation presidents to secretaries to biased selectors to ensure that Dhanrajs career was curtailed but this magnificent showman of Indian hockey beat them all at their own game. Its not that he used people to get into the team. The fact is, had he not been super-fit and tremendously talented, he could not have made it to four Olympic Games, four World Cups and four Asian Games lets not go into the details of the international matches for they would make for another book.

Single-handedly, this man kept the game alive while others with their inept knowledge of the sport tried everything in their power to pull him down. If there had been no Dhanraj Pillay in the last 10 years, even the media that adores the glamour and show-biz of cricket, would have downed the shutters on this sport. Yes, Dhanraj likes to be in control. But then who doesnt? Ask K.P.S. Gill and his bunch of selectors for that answer. Maybe, thats why he never liked the idea of an unauthorised biography. Arre, aisa kya hai, jo tu likhna chahata hai aur mujhse nahin puch sakta? queried Dhanraj, when he came to know that the book on him was unauthorised. He did try and convince me that if we both wrote it together, it would be better. But with me it has always been the freedom of writing on what I have seen and believed in. And I had seen him at virtually every tournament that he played. There were many who refused to be interviewed for this book and many who said, Please dont quote us. Surprisingly, many publishers refused, saying that they didnt want an unauthorised book. Thankfully, Shobit agreed and patiently waited for me to finish this book.

I tried to speak to members of Dhanrajs family but each of them refused. Obviously, he had told them not to speak to me. I respected his feelings because I knew Dhanraj would go into his shell if he were refused anything. And I had refused to co-operate with him on an authorised biography. But there were people in his inner circle who spoke to me and made me understand what Dhanraj was and why in so many ways he was invariably misunderstood.

Hockey has given me everything. It has given me the reason to be a journalist, though the greatest honour was to watch Dhanraj Pillay in action on the field. To be able to relate to his play and enjoy the sheer magic of his craft for that, I will always be grateful to him.

I am also grateful to K. Jagannatha Rao, former editor for sports, Press Trust of India, for giving me the opportunity to write for him, thus enabling me to pay my bills when I travelled abroad. I am also thankful to him for standing up to pressure from a senior functionary in the IHF who didnt want me to write on hockey for PTI. To him, Mr Raos reply was, Do I interfere in your selection meetings? So why are you bothered who writes for PTI?