Indian senior men team returned to home after the “preparatory tour” of Europe. Statistically, India lost 3 out of 4 outings. So, was this tour really helpful for the men in blue?
S2h team talked to some key members of the touring side. They feel the defeats conceded in the tour didn’t matter much. “Coach had already made it clear that the tour was meant for the preparations for the home World Cup & Commonwealth Games” says Prabhjot.
“See, our main purpose was to learn and we had a good experience. We used to train in the morning and play matches in the evening, and that too when all the teams were gearing up for the European Championship. And I feel we played good hockey. But for the Spain leg, all the matches were very close.” adds Arjun.
And how much did they learn? Prabhjot tells, “Coach had a certain strategy for the team and we played according to that. We lost some matches, that’s not very important. The important thing is that this tour will help us improve for the future. Team is in learning stage. We are learning quite a few things and enjoying it.”
Arjun sounds no different. He says that it is coach’s job to take the decisions regarding the tours and their importance or about the training schedule etc while players’ job is to follow him. ” I am happy the way we followed coaches’ decisions”.
Prabhjot seems pretty happy with the new coach. He feels that the European teams have a unique style of play, and to meet that bar, we need a foreign coach. “He is training us in the right direction, and we are enjoying that” says Prabhjot.
Talking of different style of play, does team India face any difficulty while working with a Spanish coach? Prabhjot disagrees. “All the European teams are very different from us. Every team has a unique style of play and we want to learn as much as we can to compete with them.”
After competing with them in the previous tour, how much did India team gain? “We learnt a lot. We had this bad reputation of conceding goals in the last minutes, we improved on that. Rather we drew some matches after being 2-0, 3-0 down” says Prabhjot.
“Human is always a learner. Playing some top-notch teams in a totally different atmosphere was a great learning experience. There were so many youngsters in the squad and all of us utilised this opportunity of learning new techniques” adds Arjun.
Now, after this learning tour, everyone is talking about the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games, which are scheduled for the coming year on our soils. Being hosts, India will be the talking point, especially after so much of turmoil at the administrative level. So, will India be able to put up an impressive show? Both Prabhjot and Arjun are confident about it. “With the new coach, we are trying to learn plenty of new things. We will try to implement those, try to make our country proud of us” says the optimistic Prabhjot.
“Of course”, says Arjun in excitement, “those are big events and they are happening in India. So playing in front of the home crowd will give us an extra edge and we are sure we will do our best” he wraps up.
We hope the coach proves some points, this learning process pay some dividends.