A century after a young Dhyan Chand arrived on these shores, India are back in Auckland. Here’s why this series is a bigger deal than it looks.
If you’ve heard anything about New Zealand and India playing sport this month, it’s probably about cricket. The mega-tour is hard to miss. But the more significant series may well be the one taking place at Lloyd Elsmore Park in Auckland from 19 to 22 November, where the Black Sticks take on India in hockey.
It matters because hockey was the sport that started it all. The first major international sport ever played between the two countries, a full 29 years before cricket. This month’s other fixtures are really a celebration of what hockey started.
Peter Miskimmin, the Government’s Sports Diplomacy Manager, puts it simply: “We are the founding sport of the 100 years.”
In 1926, the Indian Hockey Federation organised its first-ever international tour, and it chose New Zealand. India played 22 matches, winning 19, drawing two and losing just one. Along the way, a young player called Dhyan Chand emerged. He would go on to be widely considered the greatest hockey player the world has seen. His dazzling dribbling skills and goalscoring prowess changed the game in New Zealand, both on and off the grass. Crowds flocked to Lancaster Park in Christchurch for the opener, which India would go on to win 5-2.
By some accounts, 18,000 people turned out for the final Test at Eden Park, which is still the biggest crowd for a hockey match in New Zealand.
That series took place in the true infancy stage of international hockey in Aotearoa. New Zealand’s men had been playing internationals since 1922, when they beat Australia 5-4 in Palmerston North. For India however, the 1926 series is often referred to as the inaugural test matches for a nation who would go on to be one of the most successful the sport has ever seen.
The visits didn’t just fill grounds. They changed how the game was played here. New Zealand had played a hard-hitting, long-ball game, but the Indian teams passed and pushed the ball with a skill few here had seen. That style shaped a generation of coaches, and its influence ran all the way to Montreal. “If you think through to us winning the gold medal in ‘76, a lot of those players were brought up with a tradition of playing like India,” Miskimmin says.
Between 1935 and 1937, Indian sports clubs with hockey teams sprang up in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch, in the wake of the 1935 All-India tour. Every Queen’s Birthday Weekend, the National Indian Tournament is still played. And the effect on the national team was just as real, though it took a little longer to show.
Ramesh Patel was picked for New Zealand in 1972, and many players of Indian descent have followed him. By 1981, four of them were in the men’s team at the Inter-continental Cup. Three of the biggest names in New Zealand’s hockey history are of Indian descent in Umesh Parag, Bevan Hari and, more recently, Arun Panchia, who have each played more than 200 internationals for the Black Sticks.
Panchia’s great-grandfather emigrated from India to New Zealand in the 1920s, the same decade India first toured here. Panchia amassed 287 international caps over a career of more than eleven years, and he retired as the fifth-highest capped men’s Black Stick of all time. He attended an Olympic games, three world cups, and even captained the national side to a silver medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, beating India 3-2 in the semi final.
“The Indian community has contributed enormously to New Zealand hockey across that time,” Miskimmin says. “As a sport we should feel very proud.”
A hundred years on from Dhyan Chand’s first visit, the Black Sticks are about to face India on home turf, in a sport that helped build one of New Zealand’s most enduring sporting relationships. When India walk out at Lloyd Elsmore Park, they’ll be facing a New Zealand game that India helped build.
It’s also about what comes next. India are back among hockey’s best, with Olympic bronze medals in Tokyo and Paris, and they’ve had the better of the head-to-head in recent years. But New Zealand can look back to 2023, when they knocked India out of their own World Cup in a shootout.
So by all means, enjoy the cricket, football and all other sports part of this celebration. Just don’t forget who was here first.
This article was written by Joshua McDougall & Dom Gasparich in collaboration with Hockey New Zealand.