Back in 2002, in a city called Manchester, the Indian women’s hockey team scripted a fairy tale story. At the Belle Vue Hockey Centre, Mamta Kharab scored the match-winner in extra time in what was an exciting match with possibilities to clinch the game open to both teams. India eventually prevailed 3-2. Since then, Indian women’s hockey has slipped, more like a sky diver in a free fall. As hockey continues its sweet and sour story even in the men’s arena, is there is a possibility that the ‘free fall’ might get arrested in the women’s section?
At the Rio Olympics, a qualification reached after 36 highly frustrating years, India finished 12th – clearly an under-prepared team for a tournament where nobody yields an inch. Before Rio, India had played at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, finishing fourth. That same women’s team then picked up the 1982 Asian Games gold; it remains the only Asian Games gold we have won in nine tournaments, apart from three bronze and one silver.
Yet the women’s game has its sparkling moments, audacious skills and a strong heart but a temperament that would make the word ‘brittle’ blush. For brief moments in a match, they would dominate like they own the pitch and then suddenly, without any inexplicable reason, fall apart like dominoes. And it’s been happening more than quite a few times. Coaches have come and gone, but the slide continues. To an extent, a lot was expected of Sjoerd Marijne and things were looking up with the women’s team showing that missing grit. But like a bolt out of the blue, Marijne was yanked off the women’s team and suddenly found himself as the men’s coach. Though Marijne looks at the new initiative as an ‘honour’, the women’s team finds itself marooned once again. Frequent changes of coaches, history does tell us, creates a vacuum inside the minds of players—changes of tactics, coach personalities and reading of situations usually lead players of a systematic grid.
Marijne did say that when he joined it was the physical aspect that was most challenging. Culturally, an Indian team is not up to huge physical demands and it does resist. The 1998 Utrecht coach Col Balbir Singh admitted at that time that players do believe in certain physical workouts, but not in all. “It’s a battle you need to win with certain players,” he said. “And not always that you get through.”
Eliza Nelson, captain of the 82’ Asian Games gold medal winning team, in an interview once said, “Physically we are not there with the rest of the Europeans. We do play with a lot of skill, but once the physical aspect comes in, we lack that edge. And now, the game has changed since the time we played. Teams are more aggressive, bigger and use more than just skill to get the ball.”
Marijne, in the time he has been with the team, believes that competition from within the team has become tougher which in the last 3-4 years had flickered like a dying bulb in a voltage crisis. There were forwards who had taken their positions for granted and shockingly on counter-attacks refused to fall back. At the Asian Champions Trophy in 2011 at Ordos, C.R. Kumar, the coach said, “Certain players don’t even listen. They know you cannot remove them so you try and instill some belief in the others.” Later, even Kumar emphasised on the word ‘fitness’ after India had lost the bronze to Japan after taking a 2-0 lead.
And the man stepping into the coach’s shoes now is Harendra Singh, the man who gave India the 2016 Junior Men’s World Cup. Singh does admit that his name was up for the men’s team but the moment they asked him to join the women’s team, “I immediately said, yes.”
“In fact, my daughter was extremely excited that finally you are going to do something for the women’s team. And, yes, it’s an exciting challenge and I believe that when you play a tournament you need to finish on the podium.”
The challenge for Singh is on different fronts. First, that you are going to be a women’s coach in a country like India has its emotional quotient. And later come the statistics that stare at you directly in the face. At the Rio Olympics, we were 12th with goals for standing at 3 and against a mind-boggling 19, giving the team a negative rate of -16. In Johannesburg at the HWL semi-finals, things were slightly better with a draw against South Africa, a win over Chile and two defeats. Still we lost the quarterfinal, the fifth/eighth placing match to Japan and then surprisingly the seventh/eighth playoff also to Ireland 1-2. An eighth place in South Africa has left us hanging for a place in the 2018 World Cup in London.
“I need to build physical ability and capacity to take this team to a higher level,” says Singh. “We need to toughen them mentally. And it’s good that only the coach has changed. The rest of the support staff the same.”
“We will perform, but the player needs to have an objective with the ball. The result of what you do with the ball is most important in our game. It has to be precise. And I never think of the negatives. Every team has a shortfall and we will show our strengths,” he said.
Singh is a follower, a fan of the Australian coaching legend Ric Charlesworth. The importance of becoming the coach of a national women’s team is not lost on him. “Ric was one of the greatest women’s coaches ever. In his book 'The best Coach' he has written about every aspect. I don’t know if I will ever reach that level but intend to take this women’s team to the podium.”
Sports, for the fan, player and coach will always have a past, glorious or otherwise. It’s the present and the future that is in a constant mix. Indian women’s hockey eagerly looks forward for Singh to add his ingredients to that.
