Comeback trail: Sports stars who returned to make a mark after an accident

From Tiger Pataudi to Sandeep Singh, Rishabh Pant has examples to look up to

Growing up in Faridkot, Rupinder Pal Singh would cut up photos of his favourite hockey players from newspapers and put them up above his bed. It was a practice he continued when he was accepted into the Chandigarh hockey academy. By the time he got there though, one picture dominated all others, that of Jugraj Singh.

“At that time, even though I wasn’t exactly a drag flicker, he was an inspiration,” Singh says. “Not just because he had represented India, won many laurels, was a great, but also because of how strong he was mentally, having come back from such a huge setback in his own way…”

In the early 2000s, Jugraj Singh was the rage – young, good looking, charming, and a pathbreaking talent that heralded a new dawn for India hockey. The game had shifted away from India at that time, with world hockey’s reliance on drag flickers and strong defenders giving way to skilful ballplayers. The Dutch had Taeke Taekema and Pakistan, the legend Sohail Abbas.

And then came Jugraj Singh, a 20-year-old who single-handedly turned heads towards India — so much so that after a series against Pakistan in 2003, Abbas anointed him his heir. 

Barely a few months later, on a fateful day in September, Jugraj Singh met with a road accident near Jalandhar, one that left him with a broken pelvis, elbow and shoulder. It shocked the hockey world — a picture of Dhanraj Pillay consoling Jugraj Singh in hospital says more for what this meant than words could. 

In the months after, Jugraj Singh went through various surgeries, rehab and physiotherapy, but his body was broken in a way that his chief skill, the thunderous drag flick, had almost disappeared from the armoury. He was considered among the India probables a few times after, but never made the cut, and then after a stint in the Premier Hockey League, he retired in 2008 at the age of 25. 

The parallels are easy to draw. A young sports star on the cusp of brilliance meeting with an unfortunate road accident. Rishabh Pant’s road to recovery will be long and hard, but rest assured he has a lot of examples to look up to.

Also, while Jugraj Singh may never have hit the heights of his pre-accident days on the pitch, his influence outside it has been plain for others to see. Rupinder Pal Singh was part of the India team that won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics. The penalty corner coach of that team — Jugraj Singh. 

Rupinder, a drag flicker himself, was coached and mentored by Jugraj through his junior days. “I didn’t become a dependable drag flicker overnight,” he says. “Jugraj has worked hard for that. I owe my success to him.”

Rupinder isn’t the only one to have benefited from Jugraj’s experience. An earlier generation — one that consisted of Sandeep Singh, the man immortalised in celluloid (Soorma starring Diljit Dosanjh) — did too.

Sandeep has a miraculous tale of recovery himself. Having taken a bullet in the lower abdomen, after an accidental misfire in the Kalka Shatabdi Express, Sandeep went on to become one of India’s most decorated and renowned drag flickers and hockey players. 

“I think it’s important to banish the conventional idea of a comeback, first of all,” Arunima Sinha says. “Going through serious injury, or setbacks is part and parcel of sport – and even life. Sometimes it can alter your take on life, change your journey, or inspire something new. You must be willing to embrace the change.”

Sinha is a former national-level volleyball player. In 2011, she was mugged while on a train and subsequently pushed onto the tracks. A passing train ran over her left leg, leaving her with serious injuries that resulted in an amputation to save her life.

Two years later, Sinha became the first Indian amputee to summit Everest as part of the Eco Everest Expedition from the Tata Group and was awarded the Padma Shri in 2015.

Since then she has gone on to summit the highest peaks of each continent – the first amputee to ever do so.

“In earlier times, recovery rehab and restoration, even psychological therapy, was not available freely in India,” Rajat Chauhan says. “Now, access to all of this has risen, and, subsequently, it’s not out of the ordinary to think even the severest of injuries can be returned from.”

Chauhan, a physiotherapist and author who specialises in spinal and knee injuries — with a focus on runners — balances his argument by pointing out how the definition of serious injury has changed over the years. 

“There was a time when an ACL injury was considered career ending,” he says. “Now it’s a one-hour surgery, and then extensive rehab. It’s time consuming, but not career ending.” ACL injury is a tear or sprain of a tissue that helps connect the thigh bone to the shinbone.

The key to most of it though, Chauhan and Sinha both say, is mental conditioning. That old proverb about strength of will is something to be embraced and not flitted away. 

“I went through bouts of depression, lost will, and was shattered for a large period of time,” Sinha says. A chance meeting with Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to summit Everest, changed her perspective on life and offered her a chance to start anew.

For Jugraj, the chance was offered simply because of how adored he was within the community, everyone deeming it necessary to offer him a second chance. 

For some, there is a move away from what was their first calling, towards something new. But the pages of sport are also rich with stories of those who came back hard and did it all again.

Perhaps the most famous comes from cricket itself, from an era when comeback wasn’t the hashtag it is today.

In a collection of essays remembering the great Tiger Pataudi, his wife Sharmila Tagore says he never wanted his accident and the fact that he had vision in only one eye ever brought up as a conversation point. 

As a student in Oxford, Pataudi was blinded in one eye after a shard of glass entered it during a road accident in 1961. The loss of sight in one eye inhibited his depth perception — consequently rendering him unable to judge the length of a delivery and seeing double. For a batter who relied more on instinct than technique, it was a body blow. And yet, Tiger adjusted, and made his Test debut for India against England only six months later. He went on to become one of India's most successful captains of all time.  

“He never wanted it to define who he is, and never wanted what he did to be defined by it,” Tagore wrote. “That asterisk is something he despised.”