With GPS, Indian hockey goes high-tech

Uthra G Chaturvedi

When the Indian hockey team got together for their first proper training session ahead of the Asian Games at the National Stadium on Friday, they were expecting regular drills. Instead, they spent more than an hour trying to figure out a a system that included a tiny vest, a small instrument resembling a mobile phone and a belt to keep it in place.

The GPS system to monitor players’ performance is being used for the first time by Indian hockey team, and Friday was Indian hockey’s introduction to what is considered one of the latest sports technologies. Developed by GPSports, the device, which is being used by renowned football teams including Chelsea, Juventus and Real Madrid, helps track the players’ agility, acceleration, speed, endurance and heart rate, besides helping decide on the maximum workload for individual players.

It took some time for the players — and the team staff, including coaches Harendra Singh and Jose Brasa — to get used to it, and there was more fun than business during that time. With 15 individual units being provided to the team, a selected few from the squad were fitted with the device and asked to run short sprints to record their profiles, but certain glitches forced many of them to run repeatedly. When Shivendra Singh — number 7 on the list — was finally called upon for his turn, he was welcomed with catcalls and loud whoops by the rest of the team, and Tushar Khandker started his with a loud ‘yo’ even as others burst out into laughter.

But once the system was successfully in place, it was back to routine exercises for the team. Brasa welcomed the latest addition to the team technology but said it would have been more useful had it come earlier. “This is a nice system but it has come too late. It can be used for the future but it would be unfair to expect this system to produce results or have any drastic impact on the team performance at the Asian Games, since we do not have too much time to assess the results,” he said. Brasa also added that though the team had asked for 30 units, they got only 15.

The players, too, were open to the technology. Arjun Halappa, one of the players to test the system, said: “Training is fine but even while playing with it on doesn’t make any difference. It’s too small and light. And if it helps give real-time results and feedback to the players, it’s great,” he said. Captain Rajpal Singh also welcomed the system, saying it will help the players assess their fitness much better and accurately, helping develop optimum fitness.