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Togetherness the key at the Games
NEW DELHI: The Indian women’s hockey team has undergone a metamorphosis. Gone are the days of juniors lugging senior stars’ bags. They have also started to break
NEW DELHI: The Indian women’s hockey team has undergone a metamorphosis. Gone are the days of juniors lugging senior stars’ bags. They have also started to break new ground.
The practice of ordering Indian food or going to an Indian restaurant on tour is being replaced by the confidence to order Western food with Indian sauces.
The core — the girls have been together since coach Neil Hawgood’s reign started in 2012 — is made up of the team that won bronze at the 2013 Junior World Cup. “Three things happened on the tour,” Hawgood said of April’s tour to Hawke’s Bay in New Zealand.
“We had an earthquake, plane dive and turbulence for half an hour on the plane. We say ‘things happen in threes’, and when that happened I said now we know the tour would be ok. I could sleep through turbulence, but for some of the girls it was their first flight,” he said.
On the field too, changes are being felt, and now everyone is equal.
But that wasn’t the case earlier. Deepika, vice-captain of the Rio-bound squad, was tasked with collecting training gear and carrying the seniors’ gear as she was the junior-most member.
“It is in t he past now,” she said.
“We still respect the seniors as it is our culture, but once on the field we are equals,” said newlyappointed captain Sushil Chanu.
STEMMING THE ROT
After Hawgood took over he felt the core of the team had stagnated and some of the players had to be released to allow the team to evolve. “We had the same people and we gave them another go and another go. Then you sit down and you think ‘where is the evolvement of this team’? So some players had to be cycled in and cycled out,” said Hawgood.
FOCUSED
“After my first tour to Ireland we focused on the junior World Cup. We said in 4-8 years this group will look different so why don’t we make it different now and move on,” said Hawgood.
The junior-senior divide had to be checked as well. “I had to sit down and say ‘look I can’t have a group where a senior asks a junior to do this… it is not their job. Their job is to train. What we now have developed is a culture that everyone has a process that they need to do and don’t need to interfere with it,” he said.
Togetherness will be the key at Rio, which will be the women’s first appearance after a gap a 36 years. The expectations are realistic, and planning is already on for Tokyo (2020 Olympics).
