At 91, he still breathes hockey

When Principal Sarwan Singh met hockey legend Balbir Singh Sr in 1962, he had a passing thought of writing a book on the three-time Olympics gold medal winner. That thought — more than half a century and a 1977 autobiography later — has finally taken shape.
In his book 'The Golden Goal', to be tentatively released this month, the Toronto-based writer gives an interesting view to Balbir Singh's life.
One of the chapters talks of how failing in intermediate college (today's Class XII) turned out to be a "blessing in disguise" for the hockey legend, as he puts it himself.
In 1941, after the failure, 18-year-old Balbir moved from DM Intermediate College, Moga, to Sikh National College, Lahore, on the insistence of a professor, late Rattan Singh Gill. Gill had spotted Balbir at a local Basant hockey tournament in Moga. And on learning about his failure, he gave the hockey player a chance. "It was a coincidence," says Balbir in a meeting with The Times of India, at the Chandigarh home of his daughter, Sushbir Bohmia. "I even got free boarding, education, and food."
It was during his time at Lahore that Balbir was groomed into a varsity-level player.
However, this incidental centre forward's journey (there's a story behind how he became a forward too) has more twists than one would imagine, and the book tries to cover all of them.
Balbir's all-important and life-defining shift to Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1941 too had its own share of twists. The hockey legend's future India coach and mentor Harbail Singh had to coax Balbir's father, Dalip Singh, to send him to the Amritsar college. "My father felt I would do better in Lahore. But Harbail Singh would have nothing of it," says Balbir. "He sent players from the Armitsar college to Lahore to get me. They literally kidnapped me. But, eventually, it all worked out well."
In a conversation over the phone from Toronto, Principal Sarwan Singh says he was able to trace the lineage of Balbir Singh Sr to Sikh warrior Baba Bidhi Chand with the help of research done by late Jagjit Singh Dosanjh, a PhD scholar who was settled in the UK and compiled the study 'The Societal History of Dosanjh Kalan'. "In my book, I have compared Baba Bidhi Chand's horse-riding skills with Balbir's exploits on the hockey field," he says.
For the soon-to-be-released book, Principal Sarwan Singh acknowledges, he picked up facts from the 1977 book, The Golden Hat-trick, as it was narrated to late sports journalist Samuel Banerjee.
In Chandigarh, meanwhile, the 92-year-old Balbir Singh says he is not yet done with hockey. "I still want to see India winning a medal," he says. "We are planning to start a foundation on grandpa's name, and it would be for grooming hockey at the grass-roots level," pitches in Kabir, Balbir's grandson. To give a picture of their intention, he says, "We'll be at a hockey nursery in Fatehgarh Sahib when this story goes to print."
The humble iconic sportsperson, who first held a hockey stick at the age of 5 and is still as comfortable with one, paints a slightly confounding picture when asked about the title 'Golden Goal'. "At present, I am in the important Golden Goal period of my life. My match, this time, is against The Almighty (God). When he scores the Golden Goal, the story will be over."