India’s hockey fraternity was shocked by the passing of former player and coach MK Kaushik, 66, due to COVID-19 complications at a New Delhi hospital on Saturday. 
Kaushik was a key member of India’s 1980 Moscow Olympics gold-medal winning team and thereafter famously coached the Indian men’s team to the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games gold and the women’s team to the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games gold medal. 

Kaushik played in the right outer position and his partners in prime at the 1980 Moscow Games were Mumbai boys, Merwyn Fernandis, who played as right inner and MM Somaya, the team’s right half. Both fondly remembered him as their senior and mentor. “Kaushik, Somaya and myself shared the room in Moscow. We had also played together for Bombay [as it was known then] at the hockey Nationals before that, so we were very close. He was our senior; we looked up to him. He was very protective of us,” remarked Fernandis.