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
