THE SOLUTION. Part 2 of 2

For better organization, I am dividing my suggestions as long term and short term

SHORT TERM

1)    Focus on penalty conversion: PC conversion has become perhaps the most convensient  way to win matches in modern hockey

2)    Strengthen defence: working hard on basics always pays

3)    Play more and more tough matches: the more we play against European teams and Australia, the better it is for us. HIL is a great platform is this regard as it exposes our youngsters to some of the worlds best player. The players can learn a lot from them, their training regimen

4)    Fitness: as mentioned in the earlier post, out fitness level our not comparable to the Europeans. Okay we can grant our players some excuse on the basis of heredity and genes. But we must target youngsters and develop them into athletes who can run back and forth for the complete 60 minutes

5)    And some sports psychology: as some commentators have said that a team’s self confidence takes a beating when it looses consistently against other teams. I think we need to instill the ‘Yes WE CAN’ feeling in our team mates. Also regular yoga exercises might be helpful in holding the concentrations levels high even in the dying minutes of the game when we tend to falter the most

The Long term ones

1)    Making more and more stadiums of astro turfs: we are woefully short of adequate infrastructure with only about 40 astroturfs in India as compared to 440 in Netherlands which is such a small country. In germany, every school and college has one astro turf

2)    Revamping our sport administration : as supreme court has said, the sports bodies should be administered by sportspersons only. The politicians ans businessmen are responsible for the rot in the system (yes! These are SC’s own words)

3)    Have more competitions like HIL: we should encourage our players to participate in league tournaments of other nations

4)    Revive the club culture:

5)    Trap them young : encourage schemes like come and play scheme of govt of Delhi in which children are being allowed to use the infrastructure made during the commonwealth games. This can be extended to our village level where we should throw open the playgrounds of schools to every child of the neighbourhood.  Talent needs to be indentified in platforms like PYKKA

6)    Training of coaches: specially at the ground level. A senior foreign coach has remarked that our coaches are involved more in politicking and no body wants to learn from another. Every one teaches in one’s own style and there is no standardized training method

7)    Increase facilities and incentives at the SAI academies