Economic Times: A look at the rousing journey of Indian women’s hockey team
By Rani Rampal
Over the last few months, the Indian women’s hockey team has tasted a lot of success. It was the 2017 Asia Cup win, where we beat China in a tense final, that catapulted our team to instant fame. But that victory was backed by the confidence we had built-on since the team’s victory over the Belgium junior men’s team, the finalists at 2016 junior men’s World Cup, earlier in the year. It was the first time that we were playing a match against a men and to win against a quality team like Belgium meant we had made significant improvement.
As captain, I feel for many of us that win changed how we believe in ourselves, in our own individual capabilities. It was a moment of self-realisation that we can achieve success if we work towards bringing our individual strengths to fore as a team. After joining the team as chief coach, Harendra Singh started working on our strengths. Our camps are focused on limiting our weak points while our strong points are reinforced in match situations.
The areas we had been working on were successfully implemented in the Asia Cup and the South Korea Tour. We had lacked in self-belief following a string of defeats earlier. But after winning both of these events has established a new self-belief in the team. Our target was to qualify for the 2018 Women’s World Cup on merit by winning the Asia Cup. Now that we have proved to ourselves that we are the best in Asia, having won the Asian Champions Trophy in 2016 and the Asia Cup in 2017, it is now time we take this to the next level and do well on the World Stage. In these events we have beaten higher ranked Asian teams and now we are eager to register a win against the higher ranked European and Oceania teams.
For a while, we had struggled to win on foreign land. It’s never easy to beat a home side but beating South Korea at their home has made us believe we can come up with consistent overall performance in trying circumstances (extremely cold weather with temperature at about six degrees). We will be riding on this self-belief at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games where we aim to finish on the podium.
In this past one year, our overall fitness has improved. Our speed test results are better than what it was before. Our Yo-Yo Test scores have improved, and this can be seen during our matches too. Regardless of the opponent, each player plays three-four minutes with maximum speed before substitution. With improvement in strength and conditioning, we can remain fresh in those three-four minutes and are able to play with optimum speed.
Now we’ve a very systematic process where the team’s scientific advisor Wayne Lombard has data of everything. For instance, when we wake up we submit data on how tired we are, which muscle is soar or how many hours we slept the previous night. The training is planned accordingly.
If our gym session is of high intensity, then the hockey training on that particular day is of low intensity and vice-versa. There is significant change in how our training is planned and that has helped the players remain injury-free. Another reason why I believe we can register good performance in Gold Coast is a good working-collaboration between Harendra and analytical coach Erik Wonink. Harendra communicates to the team in Hindi which is followed by everyone. While he works on the team’s defence, Erik works with the strikers and this combination has proved to be vital for us.
Another area I believe has helped improve our performance is participating in various exposure tours that has helped us identify our shortcomings and improve on these weak points before a major event.
The author is Captain, India Women’s Hockey Team