Gurjit Kaur is an Indian field hockey player who plays as a defender and drag-flicker for the India women's national hockey team. She is widely regarded as one of the leading penalty corner specialists in Indian women's hockey, and was a key member of the Indian squad that finished fourth at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
| Full name | Gurjit Kaur |
|---|---|
| Sport | Field hockey |
| Position | Defender / Drag-flicker |
| Country | India |
| State | Punjab |
| National team | India women's national field hockey team |
Gurjit Kaur hails from Miadi Kalan, a village in Amritsar district of Punjab. She comes from a farming family and was introduced to hockey relatively late compared to many of her peers, taking up the sport seriously while studying at a sports school. She refined her game at the Punjab-based academy circuit and progressed through age-group teams before earning a place in the senior national side.
Gurjit broke into the senior India squad in the second half of the 2010s. She quickly established herself as the team's primary drag-flicker, taking over a role that has historically been a weakness for Indian women's hockey.
She was part of the Indian team that won the Women's Asia Cup in 2017 in Kakamigahara, Japan, a victory that helped India qualify for the 2018 Women's Hockey World Cup. She also featured in successive editions of the Women's Asian Champions Trophy, where she contributed regularly through penalty corner conversions.
Gurjit was a member of the Indian squad that won the silver medal at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia.
She represented India at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast and at the 2018 Women's Hockey World Cup in London, where India reached the quarter-finals.
Gurjit Kaur was part of the Indian women's hockey team at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, held in 2021. She scored the winning goal in the quarter-final against Australia, a 1–0 victory that took India into the Olympic semi-finals for the first time. India eventually finished fourth, with Gurjit's drag-flick performance being one of the highlights of the campaign.
Following the Olympics, she continued to be a part of the senior squad in events including the FIH Pro League, the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, and the 2022 Women's Hockey World Cup co-hosted by Spain and the Netherlands.
Gurjit Kaur is primarily a centre-back whose biggest contribution is at attacking penalty corners. Her low, accurately placed drag-flicks have been the team's main set-piece weapon, and she is also valued for her positional defending and ability to break opposition attacks in the central defensive third.
For her performances at the Tokyo Olympics and in international competitions, Gurjit Kaur was nominated by Hockey India for national sports honours and has been recognised by the Punjab state government and various sporting bodies. She is frequently cited in discussions of leading Asian drag-flickers in the women's game.
Gurjit Kaur's emergence addressed a long-standing gap in Indian women's hockey, where reliable drag-flickers had been scarce. Her conversion rate at penalty corners has been central to several major Indian results, and she is considered an important link between the senior generation that qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics and the squad that achieved India's best-ever Olympic finish in Tokyo.