From 1928 to1956 India had dominated world hockey winning only gold medals during this golden phase. With the best center forward playing Dhyan Chand India would score goals at will. Again in 1964 and 1980, India won gold medals after which we never reached the podium even once.
India's Dominance.
The main reason India was excellent in hockey were due to the presence of Anglo Indian who in 1928 represented half of the Indian team. Being a sport from Britain many Anglo Indians played this sport and joined Indian hockey. Their dominance was such that only 3 goals were scored by the opposition entirely across 3 Olympics (1928, 1932,1936). During this time Britain did not compete in the Olympics due to the dominance of Indians and the scare of losing to its controlled territory.
This slowly changed after the Independence in 1947. Many Anglo Indians left India for Australia and different parts of Europe. From half of the number of Anglo Indians came down to 5 in 1952 and 1 in 1956. Nevertheless, India won both the Olympics.
Decline.
1.The migration of Anglo Indians hurt India because of their settling down mainly in Australia and European countries. They played for respective countries and later went on to coach them. Now, look at their dominance Australia are 1st in the FIH rankings followed by Belgium, Netherlands.
2. The other major thing was the change of surfaces. Before the 1976 Olympics hockey was largely played on grass but from there on artificial turf started being introduced. This was because the maintenance of grass was costly and difficult to manage. Adaptation played a major role since none of the Indians had the experience to play on Astro turfs. The game style differs totally on both surfaces. Many countries started using bats made of carbon and fiber whereas Indians were still using bats made of wood which doesn't suit the artificial surfaces.
In India too there were hardly any Astro turfs. Slowly from the 1990s astroturf was introduced.
3.There were several rule changes like the rule of offsides. India is always known for attacking play but not many nations from Europe were good dribblers making FIH bring in the offside rule. So these rule changes again took time to get adapted to.
4.Hockey was the major sport in India but when the Indian cricket team won the world cup in England many took this as the inspiration and started switching to cricket. This was the time when hockey was declining adding to this not many athletes were willing to play adding more fuel to fire.
But now slowly things have changed in the past 5 years. Indians have moved forward in their performance winning the junior FIH World Cup in 2016 to winning silver in Champions Trophy.
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