In sport, we have figures whose destinies are interwoven with the fortunes of the game they serve. Harendra Singh is one such person.
Harendra Singh is a coach of rare conviction whose name has become both a banner of hope and a bone of contention in the saga of Indian hockey. To speak of him is to summon forth the image of a restless spirit steadfast in purpose, whose creed was forged neither in the committee rooms nor in the whispers of bureaucracy, but in the sweat-stained turf where battle is waged with stick and sinew.
His gospel is one of freedom and flourishing. Where others counselled caution, Singh bade his charges to attack, where some preached rigidity and urged fluidity.
World Cup 2016 (photo courtesy Financial Express)
For him, hockey is a symphony of swift and harmonious movement, but not a mere contest of attrition. This creed bore glorious fruit in 2016 when the Indian junior men conquered Belgium 2–1 in the World Cup final at Lucknow to reclaim the crown after a span of fifteen years. Uttar Pradesh, the state that produced immortals K D Singh Babu and Mohammed Shahid, paused time and rose to celebrate one of India’s greatest nights of the modern-day times.
It shone again when, under his stewardship, the Indian women’s hockey team won a silver medal at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, narrowly losing to Japan in a hard-fought final. Even more brightly, the team won the 2017 Women’s Asia Cup crown under his charge after a wait of 13 years, when India bested China in a pulsating finale to return to the continental throne after a long absence. More than mere victories of score and silverware, Harendra Singh’s loyals see these as resurrections of spirit wrought by his daring creed of pressing high, playing bold, and never yielding to fear.
However, as with many who tilt against the windmills of convention, his tale was shadowed by intrigue.
In the belts of authority, his candor was deemed insolent and his defiance a transgression. The very style that brought glory (the daring and attacking creed) was suspect in the eyes of those who prized prudence over adventure. Thus, he fell victim to politics and was relieved of his charge, even as his wards spoke glowingly of his guidance and his character.
What the people hailed, the powers disdained; what bore fruit in the field was uprooted from the chambers of governance. In this plight, one is reminded of Dostoyevsky’s haunting line: “Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.” Singh’s suffering, borne of his devotion to his vision, seemed woven into the very pattern of his destiny, which, though sorely tried, he clung to in faith against the tempest.
Photo courtesy The Week
Exile leads to sobering truths. For a season, he lingered as a general bereft of his battalion and learned how swiftly the wheel of fortune turns in the mercurial theatre of Indian sport. Yet he bore the wound with equal parts rancor and resilience; like steel in the smithy, his spirit was seared and strengthened by fire. Time, the final judge, vindicated much of his creed. In his absence, the women’s game faltered after scaling Olympic heights with a stirring fourth-place finish at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. India stumbled at the Paris 2024 Qualifiers, failed to qualify for the Games, and slipped winless through the Pro League, being relegated after eight consecutive defeats. The juniors, bright and defiant, retained their Asia Cup crown in 2024, but the senior side faltered when it mattered most.
In Hangzhou at the 2025 Asia Cup, India’s campaign was a story of early dominance and late despair. They began with a flourish by routing Thailand 11–0, dismantling Singapore 12–0, and drawing 2–2 with Japan to top their pool on the strength of a resplendent goal difference. In the Super 4s, they tamed Korea 4–2 with attacking verve, yet were twice undone by Alyson Annan’s well-drilled China (beaten 1–4 in both the Super 4s and the final). India returned with silver, their third medal in tournament history (1999, 2009, and 2025), a prize that shone brightly yet could not conceal the gulf that still yawns between aspiration and achievement.
It was into this breach that Harendra Singh was recalled with a war cry, “Chalo Los Angeles, 2028.” From exile, he returned to a welcome with the unspoken trust of players who had once flourished under his gaze, and in this process, the garlands from the durbars of power took a back seat.
The players’ faith in Coach Harendra was like a river that flows unseen beneath the parched earth, enduring and patient, and awaiting its moment to rise. His first test came in the Pro League, where Argentina and Belgium stood as tough opponents, like demons testing the courage of the gods in an old battlefield tale. In that moment, it felt as though destiny had turned once more like the kalachakra, the wheel of time that pushed some into darkness, lifted others back into the light, brought back the forgotten into memory, and restored the fallen to their place.
As one who has followed this game with devotion and written about its fortunes since 2012, I cannot but confess a personal yearning. I wish to see India return to a style more faithful to its roots, the traditional 5–3–2–1 system. For though our women may not possess the sheer sinew and ceaseless stamina of their European counterparts, they bear gifts far rarer: agility, guile, and the supple artistry of the Asian game.
Here, their nature aligns with Harendra Singh’s creed, his faith in holding the ball, commanding possession, pressing upon the edges of the D, and dictating rhythm rather than chasing it. Yet, amid such tactical order, my heart longs for a touch of Indian flamboyance, for that sudden flourish, daring dribble, and unpredictable spark that has always marked our hockey with poetry as much as pragmatism. It is this blend of discipline and daring, of structure and spirit, that I wish to see unfurled upon the world stage once more.
It is this vision of blending heritage with boldness and restraint with flair that makes Singh’s return so compelling. For within him dwell both the builder of order and the guardian of the soul; yet these very virtues, which hold the seed of renewal, have time and again sown the storms of his undoing.
Courtesy Bihar Say
Herein lies Harendra Singh’s conundrum: the prophet spurned, then summoned; the rebel discarded, then reinstated. His career is simultaneously a hymn to vision and a cautionary tale of how visionaries are treated in lands where tradition is heavily entrenched. One is reminded of Mikhail Bakhtin’s wisdom: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of a person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.” Singh’s truth was forged outside the solitary musings in the communion of coach and team, in the dialogue of belief and execution, and in the shared pursuit of glory that is sport.
What began as exile and return now turns toward a destiny yet unwritten, where India’s daughters, under his hand, may script epics of their own. In that promise lies the accurate measure of his odyssey; that his creed, once spurned, may become the very compass by which Indian hockey charts its rebirth.
Thus, the tale of Harendra Singh dances and flows onward like the Ganga that knows bends and stones, yet ever finds its course. If his creed of Masala Hockey is the flame he now tends, then the path ahead is like the grand yatra marked by shrines yet to be reached: the Women’s World Cup of 2026 in Wavre and Amsterdam, the Asian Games in Aichi–Nagoya, and the distant summit of the Los Angeles Olympics, 2028.
In this lies the true rasa of his odyssey: that his vision, once silenced, may yet resound as the conch at dawn and call a new India to rise, and raise India’s national game once again.
