After a long
time we hockey fans had some reasons to
cheer. India’s world ranking improved to 8th from the 11th
position. The team also defeated former world champions germany after a gap of 10 years. One
hopes that our team continues to improve and these green shoots of change are
not transitory
Lets analyse the main weak points of the Indian
national team.
1) Fitness- we just don’t seam to have
the stamina to last for the entire 70 minutes. This was recently seen very
clearly in our hero world league match against Australia where we scored 3
quick goals but ultimately lost the game
by 8-3. Hopefully the reduction of playing time to 60 minutes (4 quarters of 15
minutes) should go in our favor since our players will get more time to recoup.
We need a long term perspective plan to increase thee players muscle strength,
specially targeting the youngsters.
2) Defence- faults inside the circle in
the dying minutes have proved to be India’s nemesis on a regular basis. We need
to clearly work more on trapping the ball neatly says Jamie Dwyer, the Australian
legend. I myself find the footwork of few burly defenders of our team rather
slow.
3) Penalty corner conversion- this is
one area which has scene considerable improvement in recent years but still
there is a lot of scope for improvement. We do have talented drag flickers like
the young Rupindar Pall, Raghunath but I see that our team is not yet confident
enough to try some variations which makes it very predictable for the opposite
team to defend. As we all know that PC conversion has become a major source of
goals, we should work on a long term plan to produce players who can net the
ball like a machine gun
4) Clinging to the ball: I see our players hold on to the
ball a lot longer than is perhaps necessary.
Perhaps this is because as youngsters they have been coached in the
Indian philosophy of individual artistry. But this no more helps in the present
era of short passes. We need to rectify this and train our players to eject the
ball as soon as possible
I will discuss what according to me can be the solution to the
crisis in hockey in my next post
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