India may have failed to clinch a hockey berth at the Olympics but there will be a fair Indian representation, courtesy the diaspora, on the field in Beijing. Because half of the Canadian hockey squad for the Games is of Indian origin. Ditto for the support staff.

Ranjeev Deol, Bindi Kullar, Ravi Kahlon and Sukhwinder Singh Deol are from Punjab while Wayne Fernandes and Ken Pereira trace their roots to Goa. The support staff too has a heavy Indian presence — coach Louis Mendonca is from Goa, assistant coach Nick Sandhu from a village near Batala in Punjab while manager (team leader) Ajay Dube and resident doctor Naveen Prasad hail from New Delhi.

It isn’t the first time that players of Indian origin are making waves in the Canadian team though their number certainly is at an all time high. NRI participation in Canadian hockey dates back to 1963 when Pundit Rai made it to the national team and become the first Canadian to score an international goal.

Bindi Kullar, one of the two team members from Surrey in British Columbia who also played at the Sydney Olympics, attributes the Indian spring in Canadian hockey to the popularity of the game among the first-generation emigrants who set up the Indian Field Hockey Club (IFHC) at Vancouver in 1932. Kullar should know, for he picked up the game from his factory worker-father Pritpal Singh Kullar — he was from Sansarpur village near Jalandhar, long feted as the mecca of Indian hockey with its contribution of 14 Olympians.

... contd.