Jaswant Singh Rajput
Jaswant Singh Rajput (born around 1927 in Delhi ; † January 28, 2015 in Calcutta , West Bengal ) was an Indian hockey player who became Olympic champion at the 1948 Summer Olympics with the Indian national hockey team .
life and career
Rajput grew up in Delhi and began playing hockey there in his school days. While on the university's hockey team at the University of Delhi , he was spotted by national observers. Shortly after he was called to the Indian national team, he was used in the first group game of the hockey tournament of the 1948 Olympic Games in London against Austria , but when he went goalless in a clear 8-0 win. Further appearances in the 20-time Indian hockey squad at these Olympic Games should not follow for him. In the end, the Indians clearly prevailed 4-0 in the final against Great Britain and thus won the gold medal. This was also India's first gold medal after its independence in 1947.
Following the recommendation of his good friend and teammate Leslie Claudius , he moved from Delhi to Calcutta in West Bengal after the 1948 Olympics , where he lived until his death. Jaswant Singh Rajput's club career as a hockey player denied there, among others, at the Bhowanipore Club , before he joined the Mohun Bagan club in 1952 , with which he won the Beighton Cup , among other things .
According to various reports, he should also have played as a player in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki , but apparently not used there. Initially still as a left winger in midfield, he increasingly acted as a center in the further course of his career, where he was known for his dribbling strength and ball control. After he returned from Finland from the 1952 Summer Games, he built a car repair shop into the largest in the entire city, and immediately ended his career as a hockey player.
He continued to run his workshop well into old age, before closing it in 2011 and from then on lived on his savings. His wife had died a few years earlier; his daughter lived in Canada and wanted to bring Jaswant Rajput there, too, but the latter always refused. Until his death, Rajput was interested in hockey and claimed to be a supporter of the former Indian captain Dhanraj Pillay , whom he also described as the last Indian player with class after the quality of the Indian national hockey team had deteriorated since the early 1980s. On January 28, 2015, Rajput died of age-related illness in a Kolkata hospital after suffering from a chest infection for a month and worsening in the two weeks prior to his death.
Web links
- Jaswant Singh Rajput in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Hockey is now more about power than skill: Olympian Jaswant Rajput ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), accessed February 1, 2015
- ↑ Indian national hockey team at the 1952 Summer Olympics (English), accessed on February 1, 2015
- ↑ Hockey Olympian Jaswant Singh Rajput passes away (English), accessed on February 1, 2015
- ↑ Hockey Olympian Jaswant Singh Rajput dead (English), accessed on February 1, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rajput, Jaswant Singh |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rajput, Jaswant (short name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Indian hockey player |
| DATE OF BIRTH | between 1926 and 1928 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Delhi |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 28, 2015 |
| Place of death | Calcutta , West Bengal |