Balbir Singh Senior was born at Haripur Khalsa in Jalandhar district in 1924 and won Olympic hockey gold with India in 1948, 1952 and 1956.
In the 1952 final against the Netherlands he scored five of India's six goals. That remains the record for goals by an individual in an Olympic men's hockey final.
The 1948 gold at London was India's first as an independent country, won at Wembley against Britain, and it carried a weight nobody involved needed explained to them.
He managed the Indian team that won the World Cup in 1975, the only time India has won it.
He worked as a Punjab government sports officer and lived at Chandigarh. His medals and memorabilia, lent for a museum, were lost by the authorities holding them, which is a fair summary of how Indian sport treats its own history.
Punjab supplied the core of the Indian hockey teams of that period, from Sansarpur, Haripur Khalsa, Mahilpur and the Jalandhar belt.
He was in the Indian hockey teams that won gold at London in 1948, Helsinki in 1952 and Melbourne in 1956, and his five goals in the 1952 final is a record that has stood.
He managed the team that won the World Cup in 1975, which is the last time India won it.
He gave his memorabilia to a national sports body and a large part of it was lost in storage. Recovering it took years and much has never been found.