Gurcharan Singh
A veteran cricket coach who trained 12 international players, among them Kirti Azad and Maninder Singh, honoured with the Padma Shri in 2023.
Gurcharan Singh is a retired cricket coach of the Sports Authority of India, known across the game for the players he has shaped. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2023 in the field of sports, from Delhi [1].
Player and student of coaching
Singh was born on 25 March 1935 and passed his matriculation from City High School, Patiala [2]. Between 1953 and 1969 he turned out in first-class matches for Punjab and for Indian Railways [2]. Along the way he earned a coaching certificate under the Rajkumari Amrit Kaur coaching scheme in 1958 and a coaching diploma from the National Institute of Sports, Patiala, in 1962 [2].
Decades at the National Stadium
From 1969 to 1995 he was the cricket coach at the National Stadium in New Delhi, first for the National Institute of Sports and then for the Sports Authority of India [2]. He was also the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s North Zone coach from 1977 to 1982 and its national coach in 1985–86, ran a three-month camp in the Maldives, and headed a pace bowling academy in Gwalior from 1991 to 1993 [2].
His pupils
He has coached 12 international cricketers and more than 100 first-class players [2]. Among them are Kirti Azad, Surender Khanna, Maninder Singh, Ajay Jadeja, Murali Kartik, Vivek Razdan, Gursharan Singh, Rahul Sanghvi and Nikhil Chopra [2]. He received the Dronacharya Award for coaching from the President of India in 1987 [2].
Sources
- [1] Padma Awards 2023: list of awardees — Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Accessed 21 October 2026.
- [2] Padma Awards 2023: citation for Gurcharan Singh — Padma Awards, Government of India. Accessed 21 October 2026.
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