Olympic hockey gold medallist Gurbux Singh on Monday rated legendary Balbir Singh Senior as India's best ever scorer and someone who inspired him in his early days.
The three-time Olympic gold medallist Singh died this morning at a Mohali hospital at the age of 96 after battling multiple health issues for over two weeks.
"We all considered him (Balbir Singh Senior) as the best scorer India ever produced. And that time India was at the top of the world. Very few people had the kind of scoring ability he had possessed," the 84-year-old Gurbux, a member of 1964 Tokyo Olympics gold-winning team, told PTI.
Singh's world record for most goals scored by an individual in the men's hockey final of the Olympics still remains unbeaten. He had scored five goals in India's 6-1 victory over the Netherlands in the gold medal match of the 1952 Helsinki Games.
Gurbux remembered how Singh inspired him to take up hockey after India won the 1948 Olympics Games gold medal.
"I was a 13-year-old in 1948. When we started playing hockey, these are the people whom we looked up to -- Singh, Keshav (Dutt), Leslie (Claudius), KD Singh Babu, Udham Singh. We would follow them through newspapers and kept clippings," Gurbux recalled.
"Dhyan Chand was a complete player, Babu was known for his distribution and stickwork, and Singh will be best remembered for his scoring abilities. After him, Keshav Dutt is the last one left from the 1948 batch."
"Like any other sportsperson, he had ups and downs in his career. We failed to win the 1958 Asian Games under his captaincy. Then of course the 1982 Asian Games. He was the manager and coach when India lost 1-7 (to Pakistan in the final)."
"I kept meeting him pretty often since then. He was my first camp in charge in Patiala in 1959. He was a strict disciplinarian, a man of few words. We had tremendous respect for him."