It field’s different: The best stories from India’s hockey heroines

Sportspeople often say they’re driven by hunger – that they’ve got an appetite for winning. Neha Goyal, 27, midfielder on the Indian women’s hockey team, however, recalls being driven by actual hunger. She grew up in Sonipat, Haryana, with an alcoholic father and a factory-worker mother. “My mother made ₹800-900 a month. Our entire household ran on that; our school fees, everything,” Goyal recalls. When a school friend told her that playing hockey meant both new shoes and new clothes, Neha headed straight for the field. She was nine years old.