I speak of Amit Rohidas with reverence.
Admiration and affection are humble nouns. Admiration may be satisfied with the bare enumeration of victories. Still, affection seeks to behold the manner, to contemplate the form, and to return, again, to the figure that first awakened its delight.
I belong to a Telugu-speaking family from Berhampur in Odisha, and I write this with a longing that is at once intimate and difficult to explain. They say home is a place one recognizes in a name, a landscape, or a language; perhaps that is why my affection for Amit Rohidas is hard to explain to someone who has never known the peculiar longing of belonging to a place from afar. Let no man hasten to rebuke me for the sentiment.
Martynas Mažvydas, who compiled and published the first printed book in Lithuanian in 1547, understood, in his own way, that a people’s inheritance must be made legible before it can be fully possessed. His Catechismusa Prasty Szadei was an act of cultural preservation, an attempt to give language a durable form through which a community might recognize and perpetuate itself.
Am I wrong to say hockey is a secular sacrament of belonging, where the memory of a nation’s triumphs, the discipline of its players, and the ache of its disappointments gather into a single, enduring affection? If Mažvydas helped give a people’s language a printed beginning, I want to contemplate Amit Rohidas’s art in that same spirit.
Photo courtesy @Amit Rohidas#30 on X
Amit Rohidas began as a goalkeeper, but his gifts found their most enduring expression in defense. Having attracted attention at the 2009 Men’s Under-18 Asia Cup, where he was named Player of the Tournament, Rohidas progressed through India’s junior ranks before making his senior international debut in 2013. For a time, he endured the uncertainty familiar to gifted athletes, and that recognition may arrive only after an extended season of waiting. He continued to labor in domestic hockey and, in 2017, returned to the senior Indian team, gradually establishing himself as one of its most dependable central defenders.
Rohidas was not simply a prodigy whom the world recognized at once and rewarded without interruption. He knew the difficult interval between having ability and finding the chance to use it, and he persisted when the future offered no immediate assurance. Such perseverance is a form of character that no medal ceremony can fully reveal.
It also prepared him for the responsibility that would make him particularly distinguished: the first rush during an opposition penalty corner.
In field hockey, the untrained spectator sees the immediate business of the penalty corner (injection, trap, drag-flick, and the goalkeeper preparing to defend the goal). The accomplished observer sees a more intricate composition. Every movement depends upon timing; every position alters the available angles; every fraction of hesitation changes the possibilities that remain.
The first rusher occupies one of hockey’s most unforgiving positions. As the attacking side runs its rehearsed routine, the defender must sprint toward the danger. He must read the drag-flicker’s body, anticipate the shot’s direction, judge the angle of approach, and try to obstruct the ball before it reaches its intended destination. He cannot wait for certainty, because certainty arrives too late. The first rusher must decide while the world is still moving towards it.
Photo courtesy of @TheHockeyIndia on X
This puts Rohidas into perspective. His defensive reputation rests on anticipation, courage, precise timing, and the ability to stay composed when the body must act so fast that conscious deliberation barely has time. Yet courage, properly understood, is a technical virtue, governed by judgment. The finest rusher knows which angle to close, which space to deny, and how to confront danger without sacrificing precision. The lesser player reacts to a threat that has already appeared, but the master tries to understand the threat while it is still forming.
And what pleasure is afforded when that intelligence becomes visible! The injection is released; the ball is trapped; the drag-flicker begins his movement. Rohidas surges forward and closes the distance. For an instant, the entire contest seems to contract around the advancing defender.
The attacking side has rehearsed its composition, the goalkeeper awaits its consequence, and the spectators anticipate the shot. Then the rusher arrives. Rohidas’s art often lies in the goal not conceded, the attack not completed, the opposition’s intention left without conclusion. His greatness is partly a greatness of prevention.
Mažvydas’s achievement offers another way of understanding this principle of proportion. That is, an individual contribution’s significance lies in the larger inheritance and purpose it helps sustain. The same holds for the first rush in hockey. The defender must know when to advance, which angle to deny, and how his intervention serves the collective architecture of the defense.
In Rohidas’s case, the individual act becomes an expression of collective discipline, where one man’s courage reaches its fullest significance when it preserves the team’s design. His international career has demanded technical reliability, tactical adaptability, and the capacity to perform under the unrelenting pressures of elite competition.
As a senior defender and vice-captain, he has helped organize India’s defense, intercept opposition attacks, distribute the ball with long aerial passes, and guide younger players into the demands of international hockey. At the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021 after the pandemic postponement, Rohidas played for the Indian team that defeated Germany 5–4 to win bronze. The victory ended India’s forty-one-year wait for an Olympic hockey medal.
Rohidas went on to win silver at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and gold at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, where India defeated Japan 5–1 and secured direct qualification for the Paris Olympics. Then came the 2023 Men’s Hockey World Cup, hosted in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela, his home state of Odisha. In Rourkela, the journey from the village grounds of Sundargarh to the international arena seemed to fold back upon itself.
Photo courtesy of @RailMinIndia on X
The world had come to Odisha, and one of Odisha’s own was there to meet it. For me, this image resonates, for I know what it feels like to feel the pull of Odisha without experiencing every part of its everyday life.
Paris, in 2024, brought another complicated chapter. In the quarter-final against Great Britain, Rohidas received a red card after his raised stick struck British forward Will Calnan in the face as Calnan tried to control the ball. India’s appeal was unsuccessful, and the resulting suspension ruled him out of the semi-final against Germany. An honest account of an athlete must allow for controversy and disappointment. Yet no single incident should eclipse the wider achievement. India lost the semi-final narrowly to Germany before defeating Spain 2–1 in the bronze-medal match. Rohidas returned for the decisive contest, helping India secure a second consecutive Olympic bronze.
Now I must speak of Dilip Tirkey, whose name holds a foundational place in Odisha’s hockey tradition. I hold him in great affection for the legacy he has helped fashion, but I have never believed that affection must be exclusive. Tirkey represents the inheritance; Amit Rohidas embodies its continuing life. Whether he is Odisha’s greatest sportsperson is debatable, but to me, his place among its most distinguished athletes is undeniable.
As a native of Berhampur, raised beyond my homeland’s familiar boundaries, I honor Amit Rohidas as a home visible on the field of play, an identity distance could never erase, and an emotion that reminds me where I belong.
