Maharaj Krishan Kaushik


Maharaj Krishan Kaushik is a former member of the India national field hockey team and former coach of the Indian women's national field hockey team. He was a member of the team when it won the gold medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.In 1998, he received the Arjuna Award. He also wrote the book The Golden Boot.
For his coaching contribution to Indian hockey he received the Dronacharya Award in 2002.

''Chak De India''

Kaushik was involved in the development of the 2007 Bollywood film Chak De India. Its screenplay was written by Bollywood screenwriter Jaideep Sahani. Sahani had read a small article about the winning of the gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games by the India women's national field hockey team and thought that the premise would make an interesting film. Hockey player Mir Ranjan Negi has often been compared with Kabir Khan in the media.
On this connection Negi, himself, later commented, "This movie is not a documentary of Mir Ranjan Negi's life. It is in fact the story of a team that becomes a winning lot from a bunch of hopeless girls There is nothing called World Championships in international hockey. It would be stupid to believe that Yash Raj Films would pump in Rs.450 million to make a documentary on me. So it's illogical that it is a documentation of my life."
Sahani further stated in an interview with The Hindu:
Sahani also stated in another interview with NDTV.com that the script was conceived before he met Negi:
Sahini further noted that, "the story of Chak De was deeply inspired by the real life story of ex Chief National Coach Maharaj Krishan Kaushik and his Indian Women's hockey team's real feat of winning the Commonwealth and many other championships."
Both Kaushik and Negi did influence the development of the film after being approached by Sahini. Sahini first met with Kaushik and later recalled that, "M K Kaushik and his girls taught us all we knew about hockey. Then he recommended Negi to us, because when we finished writing and finished casting, we needed someone to train the girls. Negi assembled a team of hockey players to train the girls."
Kaushik also stated in the same interview, "I taught him everything about the game, starting from how the camp is conducted, how the girls come from different backgrounds and cultures, the psychological factors involved. Also how the coach faces pressure to select girls from different states and teams."
Sahini also contacted Negi and asked him to coach the actors portraying the hockey team. Negi agreed and trained both the girls and Shahrukh Khan for over four months.