Hockey coach Baldev Singh to be honoured with Padma Shri

Baldev Singh, who transformed the quaint town of Shahabad Markanda on NH44 into a conveyor belt for elite hockey talent, will be conferred the country’s prestigious civilian honor Padma Shri by President Droupadi Murmu on May 25, officials said on Wednesday (May 20, 2026).

Singh, 75, came to Shahabad Markanda in 1982 as a coach in the Haryana Sports Department and served there for four years. He returned to the city in 1993 and transformed the hockey nursery into one of the “most fertile centers for hockey talent,” they said.

Singh, who started his professional career with Namdhari Hockey team Bhaini Sahib and was armed with a hockey coaching diploma from the National Institute of Sports (NIS) in Bengaluru in the early eighties, has used his experience of mentoring more than 80 international players and eight Indian captains in the sport.

As the academy became a regional engine for the sport, Singh took on key roles in hockey’s competitive apparatus; He served as head coach and selector of the junior men’s team in 1993, assistant coach of the Indian team that won the Champions Trophy in Madras in 1996, and later as head coach of the senior national team.

From 2001 to 2004, he served as the coach of the Indian men’s team, including the Champions Trophy in Amstelveen, Netherlands, and led the team to the gold medal in the Asia Cup in 2004.

For over four decades, Singh has operated away from the spotlight usually reserved for star athletes, shaping the institutional scaffolding of Indian hockey; He contributes as a hockey coach at Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University, Fatehgarh Sahib, Khalsa College, Amritsar and is a core member of the Olympic Task Force constituted by the Center to prepare a road map for the 2020 Tokyo, 2024, Paris and 2028 Los Angles Olympic Games.