Before World War II Eric Pinniger was regarded as the world’s best center-half. He was vice-captain for the 1928 Indian Olympic team, later taking over the captaincy after regular captain Jaipal Singh had left the team. At Los Angeles in 1932 he was one of only four repeat players from the 1928 squad. He was one of the team’s leading figures but was not considered as the captain due to internal quarrels. In 1936 he opted out of the Olympics in Berlin for reasons that were much disputed. When they suffered a defeat in a pre-Olympic game, he was urgently asked to join the team, but never went.
Just as Leslie Hammond and Richard Allen, he received his education at Oak Grove School, Mussoorie, Uttarakhand. Like several of his teammates he was an employee with North West Railway, since 1925, and was later based in Lahore. After the partition of India in 1949, he returned to the UK to stay in the home of his grandparents, who had moved to India in the 1850s, and he later went to Scotland to live with his daughter. In his youth he was also an excellent marksman and in 1919, won one of the Empire’s top shooting awards, which would have qualified him for the Antwerp Olympics, but India did not send a team. His wife Florence was India’s best javelin thrower in her time.
India