Cliché or not, it’s true: Indian hockey is always in a perennial stage of take-off. The two pitches at Bhubaneswar’s Kalinga Stadium are awash with neon light. On the main pitch, Belgium trains while on the second pitch, India is playing an intense practice match with England. The pitch is adjacent to the Kalinga Stadium Road.
Drawn by the lights, children and men cling to the fencing, watching a sport they rarely get to view in a nation where a video of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma dancing at Zaheer Khan's marriage reception gets more likes on various social media platforms than a bruised Rupinder Pal Singh’s pictures on numerous twitter handles would. It’s a chasm that hockey struggles to bridge.
Popularity and performance sometimes go hand in hand. And the spark has been provided by the recent Asia Cup victory in Dhaka. The Hockey World League Finals is a stage where the Sjoerd Marijne-coached Indian team will try and rediscover their mojo at the international level. The Kalinga Stadium, in other words, could be Indian Hockey’s Cape Canaveral―December 1st is launch time.
On the pitch, drills are being carried out. On either sides of the pitch, India trains for penalty corners. The Dutch man watches looking for last minutes chinks, a dip in intensity, an out-of-focus player, a wrong foot in stretching for the flick. Marijne is the master tailor making last minute adjustments, a stitch here, a loose thread snipped off elsewhere. But for a man born and brought up in Holland, he understands the precarious nature of the sport.
In modern hockey, you could dominate for five minutes at a stretch and the opposition goalkeeper could pluck out goal-bound balls with last second gymnast like flexibility. And then off a counter-attack, the other team gets a penalty corner and suddenly like a tide turning, you are a goal down.
“Those are the moments you train for,” says Marijne. It’s the unexpected that most coaches look for. The expected is the usual―languid skills, subtle ball movement, thousands of cheering, goals from the home side bringing the roof down and then suddenly the opposition scores―like a calm sea after a storm everything subsides. It’s a big reason why the Indian captain Manpreet Singh speaks of structures and structures.
“We need to maintain our structure irrespective of the state of the match,” he says. “Winning or losing, the grip on the match is maintained by how we keep our mental state.” In sport, that’s all there is to a large extent―the mental ability to look at a game beyond just winning and losing. In the Asia Cup, South Korea led by a goal through the match and effectively shut out India with some tight and controlled play. It’s only in the end that India scored.
Marijne later said: “The ability to score in a last minute situation is an encouragement.” The coach wasn’t speaking about skills or the move that resulted in the goal. He explained the Indian team’s ability to not count the seconds but keep moving ahead not forgetting that only a goal was needed to draw level. A decade back or more, the towel would be thrown in.
But it’s not that simple to just focus on the coach and feel that the man standing on the side-line will deliver wins. It’s an Indian team that is not banking on experience to propel its youth-fuelled turbines.
Sardar Singh is missing from the line-up and in modern hockey like in so many other sports except for cricket probably, the coach decides who gets on the airplane. Marijne understands the questions that dropping a player who at 31 is not aged but experienced has its own pitfalls. But for the moment, one needs to back the coach on it. Failure at the HWL will put the scanner on Marijne and he understands that part too. Mentorship is another area that Sardar could have contributed and questions do arise that a player of his calibre and control could have been dropped for the less demanding Asia Cup and not the high-intensity HWL. It’s a doubled edged sword; let’s see which way it scythes.
Mental toughness
With the Olympic Champions Argentina in the fray, reigning champions Australia, an immensely strong Holland, a resurgent Spain, Olympic silver medallists Belgium, the structurally sound Germany and mercurial England, India have their task cut out. Eight teams play and also enter the quarter-finals. It’s a design that could be called flawed but also in a sport like hockey, down turns are as common as surges. So if a team is unlucky to lose three games in a row, it can win the HWL by playing three consecutive matches on a high. In the last HWL in Raipur, India lost their first three matches and then won the bronze medal. Marijne’s argument on ‘mental toughness’ finds resonance here.
Locating the weaknesses of the Indian side is not as difficult as finding life on Alpha Centauri. You have two full backs coming after long lay-offs; especially Birendra Lakra. Mentally, a training match is somewhat less off a baggage than playing a high intensity match against Australia. Then you have Dipsan Tirkey and Varun Kumar playing what is their first big international tournament. Nerves are frayed, blood pressure shoots up like a fountain and hands usually quiver when faced with six counter-attacks in the space of three minutes. It’s in the defence that India will face its big test. The others play on experience in the midfield and forward-line.
Manpreet says the team will not miss Sardar as players are already filling in the gaps. These are not only brave words but also under-line the plan that Marijne is slightly reluctant to say―India is looking and striving to move ahead from a player who dominated for almost a decade.
Like any poker player, consistency and that bit of luck for the right cards to fall is key to any side that wants to move up from the 6th spot it occupies in the FIH rankings. Moving up is a sign of change and in return bolsters the confidence of a bunch that is looking to mark this tournament as a key note address in the run up to the 2018 World Cup at the same venue. It’s a way of saying that if we do it now, we can do it then.
Up front, S.V. Sunil, Akashdeep are the trump cards. Sunil brings in experience and with his speed, he can unsettle defenders. Akashdeep kills defences with subtle skill and a sword that may seem velvet laced but is as sharp as a butcher’s knife. Gurjant is the pure striker, the man who bangs the ball in. No fuss, only goals. Also crucial is Mandeep Singh who made his big tournament debut at the 2014 World Cup. Three years down the line with the Junior World Cup crown in his pocket, he needs to stamp his presence. Lalit Upadhyay is the classic forward―the one you will watch mixing skill with speed, harassing the defence and sending fans into raptures. But each of them knows that the feat is recorded on score boards through goals. And it’s time for the forwards to come good in a big tournament.
After the failure of Australia in Rio, they would look to make amends while the Olympic Champions Argentina would want to keep pushing their dominance on the world stage. Holland under coach Max Caldas is only thinking of one path―win the HWL. The rest which includes Belgium, Germany, Spain, England and India will look to find moments in a four quarter period where they can turn the game around.
The most striking aspect of this tournament for the fans who already have purchased all the tickets for the India matches is the speed in which hockey will be played. Into that mix is India with its skills, ball speed and striving for that ‘mental’ edge which might just become the difference between losing and winning a close fought encounter.
