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New Indian Express: It is all Blue yet again

New Indian Express: It is all Blue yet again

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New Indian Express: It’s all Blue yet again

By Swaroop Swaminathan

CHENNAI: “Call him Voldemort, Harry,” Albus Dumbledore told the protagonist in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. “Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

Just after the first camp was convened for the Junior World Cup, Harendra Singh sent out a form to all potential members of the final squad. It was in the nature of a slam book — personal questions like nicknames and idols figured prominently.

It also contained a query — ‘India’s toughest opponent’. Of the 32 players who returned their forms, 17 had written ‘Australia’. The veteran coach had perhaps already known it, but he wanted the players to be forthcoming. Australia has, in the past, been a chimera to India’s progress in the sport. So much so that the last great Indian campaign at the senior level — the final in the Champions Trophy this year — was ended by the Kookaburras.

Knowing who they feared most wasn’t the first phase in making them champions, but it was significant in the learning process. Specialised tactics were prepared as the coach, 11 years after he took the 2005 batch to the semifinals, fully embraced the challenge. “I’ll make each and every one of you a winner,” he had told them. “If you listen to me.”

Harendra, in the past, has been vilified by sections of the media. Some proclaimed that if Indian hockey had to be saved, he had to be removed. 7.20 pm on Dec 18, when India became champions, he was partly responsible for saving it.

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When scientific advisor Cody Tribe joined the support staff in March this year, there was only one thing he wanted to achieve — build up conditioning in such a way that the team was in optimum condition when the World Cup came around. “If you ask some of the other people, they’ll probably tell you each and every tournament is as important,” the Australian told Express before the squad left for Lucknow.

“But for me, it was different. I prepared the boys for every tournament, keeping in mind the bigger picture.”

Not allowing the players to touch sweets was a big part. Thanks to that, Tribe frequently picked up friendly fights in the kitchen at the Sports Authority of India in Bengaluru.

“I still have lots of arguments in the kitchen about the fact that these boys are just consuming way too much sugar,” he had said.

“As part of the diet, even sweets are a no-no, but some boys are sneaky.” Squad members in years past did not bother about following a fixed nutrition and diet during their holidays. Under Tribe, who was part of a few club teams in Sydney before coming over to India, that was a non-starter. “Whenever they go home, I hand them three charts – running, gym and mobility. So the boys note down the amount of work they have done in each of those three segments. They can’t lie because the yo-yo tests will reveal whether they were truthful or not.”

Most of the work he did was behind the scenes, but England coach Jon Bleby touched upon it. “The Indians are very fast, so playing them at their own game is suicidal,” he noted. The adjective ‘fast’ hadn’t been used to describe Indian hockey in a long, long time.

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“Twelve to fourteen hours,” Aadhithya Chakravarthy says. No, the video analyst for the men’s team wasn’t talking about the number of hours he sleeps. Rather, the amount of time he spent looking at videos of matches every single day during the World Cup.

An eye specialist might have an opinion on how unhealthy that is to the retina, but watching videos and plotting the downfall of opposite teams is part of Aadhithya’s job description. It was during one of his many fact-finding missions that he noticed a Belgium weakness. It was used to devastating effect. “During the Netherlands-Belgium match, we noticed the latter was weak to aerial diagonals on the help side,” Aadhithya told Express. “There are two sides in the sport — ball and help.” The former is where the ball is, and the latter is named thus because it helps create opportunities because of the lack of defenders.

“The number of attackers and defenders present on the ball side will be more. So we sent our wingers and midfielders to the help side, and asked players to play aerial diagonals towards that area. And it helped us to a great extent against Belgium,” he explained.

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Since the smartphone revolution, teams have started using WhatsApp groups. A few, like Chelsea, have one just for all the players out on loan. The junior Indian hockey squad, too, has one. Harendra had created the group after a meet-and-greet session in April 2014. After numbers were swapped, players got a notification. “You’ve been added to a group,” it said. Its name was simple. “Mission 2016.”

Some 30 minutes after the final presentation ceremony in Lucknow, Harendra, the moderator, changed the name. “Champions 2016.”

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