Sansarpur in Jalandhar district has produced 14 hockey Olympians and more than 300 national and international players. No other village in India has sent as many people to the Olympics.
Among them: Udham Singh Kular (1952, 1956, 1960, 1964), Gurdev Singh Kular (1956), Balbir Singh Kullar (1964, 1968), Balbir Singh Kular (1968), Jagjit Singh Kular (1964, 1968), and Ajit Pal Singh Kular (1968, 1972, 1976), who captained the World Cup-winning side in 1975. The hockey player Udham Singh is a different man from Shaheed Udham Singh Ji of Sunam and the two are frequently confused.
Standards have fallen. The village has no astroturf.
The village is Kular by got and its hockey came out of the army: fathers and uncles in the Sikh Regiment played, the cantonment at Jalandhar was close, and the game was played on rough ground with sticks from the Jalandhar factories a few kilometres away.
Four members of one family played in Olympic teams. Players from this village represented India, Kenya and Canada, which is a consequence of the same emigration that runs through every Doaba village on this site.
The decline is specific and dateable. Astroturf became the international surface from the 1970s and a village cannot lay or maintain it. The nursery that produced fourteen Olympians was a patch of packed earth, and the game moved to a surface that only an institution can afford.
Heritage Times, on the decline of Sansarpur hockey.