New Indian Express: Performances of India’s Young Stars Prove Game is in Safe Hands

Sunday is D-Day for the global silver-lined Coal India Hockey India League. My favourite teams, Jaypee Punjab Warriors and Kalinga Lancers have fittingly qualified for the Sunday fiesta.

We saw refreshing hockey in the semifinals. The pace, the intensity, the quicksilver turnovers kept me and the women’s team in full awe. I hope the entire nation experienced the same.

The last five minutes of the Ranchi Rays-Kalinga Lancers encounter was heart stopping.

The semis were veritably first-order hockey, a kind that rekindles our passion for hockey. Sunday’s medal matches will add to our insatiable hunger for quality hockey. We observed many wonderful things in the semifinal on Saturday, especially keeping up the fighting spirit to the hilt. This will come good for us at Rio.

Over the years, hockey has blossomed into a thing of beauty. Long spells of professional training, abundance of exposure and natural talent have metamorphosed it into a viable T20 variety. That is why semifinals were a revelation. We don’t see every day the goals that Arman Qureshi struck against Delhi Waveriders in the first semi and then the way Ranchi Rays came back into reckoning in the last four minutes.

If eleven vs eleven players can explode the way they did in these matches, I wonder how things will turn out in the next big thing for field hockey, the Hockey 5s.

Less players will wield the stick on the same acreage of turf in hockey 5s. It will turn out to be a revolution. This way I see the entire Coal India Hockey India League as a premiere of future hockey.

The final on Sunday promises to be even more nail-biting. I expect a deluge of goals, like the one Arman Qureshi punched against Delhi on Saturday.

Over all, our youngsters Sumit Kumar, Talwinder Singh, Mandeep Singh, Nilakanta Singh, Gurjant Singh, Armaan Qureshi and others, impress me a lot. These colts have raised their game a few notches above their known levels to match the world’s best. I hope young girls in our team too pick up the gauntlet from them. They have the right platform in the right juncture of their career.

Nothing can now stop them. Future of Indian hockey is safe, steady and secure.

I am impatient. I cannot resist seeing the final. Which team will get the highest winners’ prize money (Rs 2.5 Crore), who will pick up the Best Player (Rs 50 lacs)? Personally, I feel for an Indian coach, an Indian player there, but in sports emotion doesn’t count but form of the day. Yesterday doesn’t count, only today.