In Hardik Singh’s play, the romanticised ’70s breezy hockey fuses with the modern digitised game

Indian hockey team midfielder Hardik Singh clinched the prestigious title of Men’s FIH Player of the Year at the FIH Hockey Star Awards 2023. This is another feather to his cap after making India win Bronze at Tokyo 2020 Olympics. (Photo via X)

On the hockey pitch, Hardik Singh, India’s creative force in the midfield, at times, paces back and forth, sideways too, the pattern of play, dictating his positional presence. Sometimes, you can see him, standing still, though in hockey that’s a rarity, but if he gets that one second, he seems deep in thought, almost willing his ideas to materialize, transpire, take shape.

As a junior, picking up the hockey stick, he dreamt of medals and trophies. Over the years, since he made it to the national team for the 2018 World Cup in Bhubaneswar, his convictions for becoming a hockey player, have never wavered; he is that sublime archer in a team game focussed on the bristle board. Now with the FIH Player of the Year award, his first, and hockey’s most important recognition in his grasp, he immediately veers around to who was more deserving.  Hardik is taking team-talk global. “Germany’s Niklas Wellen is the player I expected to win,” says Hardik. “He was the player of the final in a World Cup (2023) his team won, and he was also the highest scorer (7 goals).”

“Yes, it was unexpected. But I am glad I won. It’s good to get it and I am extremely thankful to the team as without them, there are no awards. This is for every player, the entire team. They help me be the best.”

Hardik constantly reminds you that he is in a team game. At times, it’s like the word ‘team’ is his mooring, to the sport. “If I wanted to be an individual in a team sport, I wouldn’t have come to hockey,” he explains. Unlike cricket, where an individual can still stand forth as an individual, with a hundred, a fifer, hockey or football for that matter is a sport of patterns, created before that final product, a goal, or the creation of a penalty corner. Even in a penalty corner, it’s the precision of the pusher and then the stopper that decides the accuracy of the drag flicker, or even the indirect, the 4th stage in the scoring of a goal, even though the scorer is the most celebrated.

Hardik knows the joy of scoring. Even in a team sport, that he espouses so diligently, it is unbridled joy for him, any player, when a brilliant move creates a goal or even a match-winner is scored.

In the Tokyo Olympic quarter-final against Great Britain, India leading 2-1 in the 4th quarter as GB amped up the attacks, India sneaked off a counterattack in the 57th minute as Hardik, deft touch inside the English striking circle, circling off a defender, swatted the ball goalwards. The GB goalkeeper Oliver Payne, coming off the line, took it on the pads. The ball dropping once again to Hardik as the Indian midfielder took it on the bounce and drove it goalwards as the 3-1 score-line closed the game on GB ensuring India enter the medal-round for the first time since Moscow 1980. Later, Hardik had said, recalling that goal: “It’s an amazing feeling to score in a tense situation.”

The goal that would be hard to replicate came against Spain at the Birsa Munda Stadium in Rourkela in India’s first match of the 2023 World Cup. Stealing the ball away from the left corner of the midfield, Hardik, sprinted, a gazelle streaking down the left, the ball delighted to be on his stick, as he spun inside, a deft touch taking the ball to the right and left, all in the same motion and then sending it towards goal, the ball bouncing off the Spanish defenders stick and into the net. Even the ball couldn’t deny itself the thrill of a goal of such a brilliant run from the left.

In India’s 2nd match against England, Hardik suffered a ham-string injury and what would have been a promising World Cup ended. Without him, India lost that inventiveness and energy in the midfield, ultimately crashing out in the cross-over against New Zealand.

The year, however, has ended well for Hardik and the Indian team. Wins in the Asian Champions Trophy and then the gold at the Asian Games have given the team confidence going into 2024 which is the Olympic year. In terms of his own performance, he gives himself ‘8/10’ and the team ‘7/10’. “But the process, the development, has been good,” he says.

When you see Hardik play, the moves, the tilt of the head with the ball on the run, you understand he is the thinker, that mind creating spaces, urging players to invent gaps, open the cracks up. A lot of it has to do with strategy, tactics, and Hardik points to one man who has instilled the group with an ‘European thinking’ coach Craig Fulton. “He has developed the team further, he is a tactical coach and we have raised our levels under him,” says Hardik. “He has a lot of ideas and believe me; we can be the best team in the world.” What is left unsaid by Hardik is Fulton’s coming has instilled a belief that the team can do it at the Olympic and world level. It also goes without saying that Fulton is the 2015 FIH Coach of the Year when he made Ireland qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics, a feat akin to seeing Nepal on the Asian Games podium. Fulton then was assistant coach to a Belgium side that won the 2018 World Cup, the Tokyo bronze, and the 2023 World Cup silver.

Thanks to some brilliant coaches across the world, hockey is evolving like a board game; an entire pitch cut up into zones as players protect their areas while actively looking to counter-attack the moment a turn-over happens or a crack appears. In how we perceive the sport and it’s play, changes almost annually. “What we saw in 2016 is completely different to what we see now,” explains Hardik. “At the 2012 London Olympics, there was almost no zonal marking, now it’s imperative. In 2016, Belgium started the zonal method.” Maybe, by the time, Paris comes along, expect a new, a different strategy, which eventually might be the different between standing on the podium or playing classification matches.

Hardik admits that the 2023 World Cup where India finished 9th was a reality check. “Pressure for Paris will be there,” he says. “We need to learn from the past. Tactics is not something that is in our DNA, but we need those inputs so that as players we improve.”

Hardik on the ball is like a breeze flowing across the pitch. He does make ball play look ridiculously easy while to the beaten opposition, the player, they can only glance back as he twirls through traffic, opening gaps and spaces in the opposition striking circle. His balance, aerial awareness makes him a complete player, a coach’s asset but he feels: “The more information we have on the opposition, the better it gets for me and the other players.”

Back home in Jalandhar, where he will head for a year-end break of a week, his parents, family still ask him about his FIH Player of the Year award, “Tu sachi jeet gaya? (You actually won?),” Hardik laughs.

From being a huge fan of Peaky Blinders, he is now on the 160th episode of his latest obsession, the Japanese series Anime, this particular one runs past 1000 episodes. After AP Dhillon’s Brown Munde, Hardik is humming Karan Aujla’s Bachke, Bachke and Try Me which has lyrics like Oh Tom Ford pava, Chahe kurta svava, Kure Paris toh kapda, mangoda darzi.

Hardik is part of a team that Fulton extends a license to experiment and the freedom to fail. For Hardik, however, it’s the team jersey, the India shirt that carries the ultimate message. “For me, for the team, that shirt is a symbol of Do or Die.”

Paris 2024 beckons.