India and New Zealand: hockey at the forefront of a century of sporting connection
June 26, 2026 marked the 100-year anniversary of the first sports tour of New Zealand by an international team from India – the Indian Army Hockey Team that took on New Zealand in a three-test series that kicked off Christchurch’s Lancaster Park.
The saying that a picture is worth 1000 words is somewhat of an understatement when it comes to the historic photograph of the Indian Army hockey team and the New Zealand test side that faced off over three historic matches in 1926.
Certainly there’s a lot to unpack when studying the photo exactly 100 years later. For starters, the composition tells a story all of its own. The Indians, resplendent in their blazers, and the Kiwis in their silver-fern emblazoned black playing jumpers, are carefully placed so that representatives of both nations are side-by-side.
There’s no ‘us and them’, but rather a collective that speaks to a bygone era when camaraderie and competition were considered of equal value, and endeavour and effort prized at least as highly as victory.
The placement of Indians wearing turbans in the back row and those without in the front provides an element of symmetry that just happened to match the outcome on the field – with each team notching a win, loss and draw over the three-match series.
The unity and rich shared history so wonderfully symbolised in the image was repeated again a century later when the Black Sticks women and India women’s hockey team gathered for photo final of the 2026 FIH Women's Nations Cup in Auckland six days before the 100 anniversary of the taking of that original image.
The latest chapter in sporting rivalry between the nations comes as New Zealand focusses on buildingbilateral engagement with India across government, business and sport through Sport New Zealand’s sport diplomacy programme.
For Peter Miskimmin, a former New Zealand hocky representative, a recent diplomatic mission to India headed by Associate Minister of Sport Chris Bishop, with support from Sport NZ’s Chief Executive Raelene Castle, was particularly poignant.
A veteran of over 20 hockey test matches against India, Miskimmin’s connection with India goes well back beyond his playing days – right back, in fact, to that 1926 Indian Army tour.
If there’s one gentleman who stands out in the aforementioned photograph, it is surely the man seated second from left dressed all in white – the wonderfully-named Honourable Secretary of the NZ Hockey Association Havilah Down.
Down not only organised the tour, he refereed the matches, becoming New Zealand’s first international hockey referee in the process. He also just happens to be Miskimmin’s grandfather, and grandfather to Miskimmin’s Olympic gold medal winning cousins Barry and Selwyn Maister.
Impressive as that may be, perhaps the peak example of hockey royalty in the image is the gentleman standing diagonally behind Down’s left shoulder, Dhyan Chand.
Described by many as the Don Bradman of hockey, Chand was a genius level player. Of the 183 goals the brilliant Indians scored on their 17 match New Zealand tour, Chand is said to have scored roughly half of them.
As it tends to go with sporting families, Chand would pass his hockey genius to his son Ashok Kumar, an Indian national hero in his own right who would do battle on the international hockey stage against the Maister brothers.
To mark the incredible connection between the families as it reached the hundred-year mark, Miskimmin presented a gift from his granddaughter Olive to Kumar’s twin granddaughters at a welcoming function for the Kiwi delegation.
“That was pretty cool,” says Miskimmin.
“That’s five generations on my family’s side going back to my grandfather and four generations on Dhyan Chand’s that continue to be connected through sport over a century.
“That’s a great illustration of the special, close bond between New Zealand and India that stretches back generations and an incredible example of the power of sport to forge connections and bring people from different nations together.”