The only known surviving competitor of the 1928 summer Olympics in Amsterdam is Clara Marangoni, an Italian gymnast who won a silver medal when she was only 12. She is now 100 years old.
Perhaps I got the short straw when it came to the five greatest moments of Indian sport, because this event occurred before my father was born, when Queen Elizabeth's grandfather was Emperor of India and Lord Irwin was Viceroy. What could an India-born Australian citizen, now in his mid-50s, contribute to in recalling an event that no one currently alive witnessed or could recall?
Perhaps being an Anglo-Indian, this topic was right up my street, because a majority of players in the 1928 team were Anglo-Indian, names my grandfather, father and his friends would talk about - Richard Allen, Michael Gateley, Leslie Hammond, Rex Norris, Broome Pinniger, Frederic Seaman, William Goodsir-Cullen, George Marthins, Michael Rocque (nine of the 14-member squad).
Much has been written about the contribution of Anglo-Indians to Indian hockey and the expansion of their services and expertise to other countries, especially Australia. So I decided that the aim of this piece should be twofold. Firstly to look back at that first sporting win on the world stage for a nation still under colonial rule, and the impact it had on India; secondly, draw some kind of tangible connection between this victory 88 years ago and modern Indian sport.
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India was still very much under the yoke of the British Empire. The Simon Commission, a group of seven British Members of Parliament, had been dispatched to India in 1928 to suggest constitutional reform. Ironically, one of its members was Clement Attlee, who went on to become the British Prime Minister and eventually oversaw the granting of independence to India in 1947.
"It wasn't the 1928 win per se that had a great impact. It was the fact that 1928 began an era of invincibility which put us on the map of world sport." Keshav Dutt
The Indian Olympic Association (IOA), the body responsible for sending Indian teams to the Olympics, was formed only a year before the 1928 games. It was only the third time that India was participating in the Olympics. India took part in the 1920 games, sending six competitors (three athletes, two wrestlers and a tennis player). Prior to that, only one Indian had competed at the Olympics, Norman Pritchard in 1900, winning two silvers (200m and 200m hurdles). Research by Olympic historians has shown that Pritchard, an Anglo-Indian, was indeed chosen to represent Great Britain after competing in the British AAA championship. However, the IOC still regards Pritchard as having competed for India and his two medals are credited to India.
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The year 1928 was the first time that India took part in the hockey competition, after the game had been taken to India by British servicemen. The first clubs were formed in Calcutta in 1885. The Beighton Cup was held ten years later, followed by the Aga Khan Tournament a year later.
In Amsterdam, India won all five of their games, scoring 29 goals without conceding any. They then went on to win gold in succeeding events until 1956, and then in 1964 and 1980.
Any hockey aficionado can rattle off those statistics. But the point of this piece is to look at the impact this had on India, not only on Indian sport but on the Indian psyche.
Strange are the events that define a nation. My adopted country, Australia, is defined by perhaps the greatest military loss of all time, on the beaches of Gallipoli during World War I. It is deep in the psyche of every Australian, the 25th day of April 1915.
Could the hockey gold in 1928 have had any kind of national impact on the collective Indian mind?
The records show that India played under the flag of "British India" - an unofficial or semi-official flag used to represent British India at international events. It involved a red backdrop, with the Union Jack at top left and the Star of India in the middle.
It was under this flag that the Indian contingent of 21 competitors (seven athletes and a hockey team of 14) marched. It was the first time that the parade of nations started with Greece and ended with the host country, a tradition that continues today.
"Mahatma Gandhi refused to get involved in raising money for the Indian hockey team to defend their title at the next Olympics. "What is hockey?" he supposedly asked."
After India won the gold-medal game, beating hosts Netherlands 3-0, there was no medals ceremony or national anthem; nor did the Indian team climb on a winners' podium. Those patriotic Olympic traditions were introduced at later games.
So in reality there were no real, tangible opportunities for nation-building with this win. Yet it must have had a huge impact in Britain's most important colonial dependency.
Take these facts into consideration. Hockey had previously only featured twice at the Olympics - in 1908 and in 1920, and both titles were won by Great Britain. So how did the defending hockey gold medallists fare at the 1928 games? Well, Great Britain did not field a team. Which raises the questions: Did they feel that India was representing the Empire? Or were they afraid of being humiliated by a colony they had taught to play the game?
Take your pick, because either answer provides a glimpse of the potential impact the 1928 win must have had on the Indian people.
It's worth noting that Mahatma Gandhi refused to get involved in raising money for the Indian hockey team to defend their title at the next Olympics. "What is hockey?" he supposedly asked. That may have been a case of the great man foreseeing the future and setting a lesson for the nation's politicians to not get involved in sport. A lesson India has not learnt very well, of course!
There is a limit to how much statistics and records can provide. One had to dig deeper. I had to speak to someone who had some knowledge of what it was like to be a part of the Indian hockey gold medal-winning era. The only one who came to mind and who is still with us is Keshav Dutt, member of the winning teams at the 1948 and 1952 games. The nonagenarian confirmed what I had suspected all along. "It wasn't the 1928 win per se that had a great impact," Dutt said from his home in Kolkata. "It was the fact that 1928 began an era of invincibility which put us on the map of world sport."
He then reminded me of this statistic: 11 hockey medals in 12 Olympics between 1928 and 1980. "I'll say it was hockey which was responsible for putting India on the world map," he added. "The world was in awe that we had mastered the game so quickly and dominated it so thoroughly."
He was right. The invincibility has worn off now, but the name "India" still resonates, and is still feared around the hockey world. It has been 36 years since the Moscow Olympic gold, but mention Olympic hockey to anyone in the world and the first country that comes to mind is India, because of the team's historical dominance at the Olympics.
Australia's 1988 Olympic women's gold medal-winning goalkeeper Kath Partridge is a colleague of mine, a principal of a large school in Perth. She is still involved in coaching the Australian men's and women's hockey teams. When the Kookaburras (Australian men's team) played India, she would tell me, "Tough game today Andy, the Indians. We never know what magic they will come up with."
"After India won the gold-medal game, beating hosts Netherlands 3-0, there was no medals ceremony or national anthem; nor did the Indian team climb on a winners' podium"
It is this magic and wizardry that Dutt described to me in relation to the 1928 gold. Dutt recalled the "shy, very quiet chap", Dhyan Chand, who he had the honour of playing with in the 1940s, towards the end of the latter's playing days. Dutt rattled off stories about Chand. How the referees would stop play to check that the Indian did not have glue on his stick; how Adolf Hitler had asked Chand to stay on in Germany after seeing him play at the 1936 Olympics; what Don Bradman said after seeing him play: "He scores goals like we score runs." All of these are a part of the folklore of India as a sporting nation. And it began in 1928.
I then asked him my almost rhetorical question: "Do you think Dhyan Chand was the first superstar of Indian sport? The Sachin Tendulkar of Indian hockey?"
His answer surprised me: "Arre baba, he was the Bradman of world hockey. For the India of those days he was Sachin and Virat Kohli rolled into one!"
Dutt had provided me the connection between the 1928 hockey gold and modern Indian sport. He then reminded me of the difference between the first superstar of Indian sport and today's superstars. It is said that Chand himself was disappointed at what he got in return for his stupendous service to the nation. His son Ashok Kumar, also a national hockey player, once said: "Babuji was against me playing hockey, and scolded me often for that." Imagine a father discouraging his son from playing a game that had brought him so much glory and fame - but little else, I suspect, because often India tends not to treat all its champion sportspersons with equal dignity.
To make a further connection between Indian fathers encouraging their sons in sport, and create a link between India's first major sporting triumph and modern Indian sport, the logical path would be to look at India's latest victory on the world stage. Leander Paes had just won his 18th Grand Slam title, at the French Open in Paris. His father, Dr Vece Paes, a 1972 hockey Olympian, is respected across sporting generations as a player, mentor, sports doctor and sports thinker.
"Many of us took up hockey deliberately because we knew it was the only game in which we had any hope of winning an Olympic medal," Paes senior told me a day after Leander won the French Open mixed doubles and was potentially on track to compete in his seventh straight Olympic Games in Rio later this year.
So why did Vece not get Leander to play hockey with the aim of winning an Olympic gold?
His answer perhaps summarised where India has come as a sporting nation since the glory days of hockey have come to an end.
"I couldn't sell the Olympic hockey dream to the young Leander."
What a telling statement from the father of the man who went on to break India's 44-year Olympic medal drought when he won the tennis bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
In reality that is a sentiment many Indian parents probably share with Vece when it comes to convincing their children to play hockey, or perhaps any sport other than cricket. Shades of what the great Chand told his son Kumar.
Clearly the golden days of India hockey, which began in 1928, have passed. Yet strangely, many Indians still seem to think a repeat of the glorious era between 1928 and 1956 is just around the corner. One game away. One tournament away.
"That's because hockey is in our blood, in our soul," says Vece Paes. "We caught on to it very quickly. By 1928 we were world-beaters. It suited our temperament, our style and our mindset. It gave us glory. That is why we are emotional about it."
Despite the doom and gloom, like every other Indian, Vece is still hopeful about Indian hockey. He explains to me in detail how the Hockey India League and other measures will make India the "financial capital" of world hockey.
"Just as India is the financial capital of world cricket?" I ask, reminding him that the Board of Control for Cricket in India was formed in 1928, the year of that great Olympic triumph.
He laughs and says, "Ah, that's really ironical. But of course that's a different ball game altogether."
Indeed it is, in more ways than one. Indian sport has come a long way since the legacy of the 1928 group of 14 amateur world-beaters who scrounged for funds to travel to defend their title at the next Olympics. Or has it?
Andy O'Brien's investigation of world hockey, "Hockey walking the tightrope" after the Karachi World Cup in 1986, won him the inaugural All India Sports Journalist Award. He currently lives in Perth and works for the Department of Education.