The immediate task confronting Ajay Kumar Bansal, the chief coach of the Indian junior hockey team, is to get the combination right for the Junior Asia Cup to be held here from July 8 to 18. Aiding him in this exercise will be the two-week conditioning camp with 32 probables that runs through July 7.
“I have been working with them for quite sometime. Dragflickers Diwakar Ram and VR Raghunath are our big assets. Forwards like SV Sunil, Gurvinder Singh Chandi and Pramod are very experienced. So it is not difficult to pick the best team,’’ the coach said. According to Bansal, who had masterminded India’s march to the Azlan Shah final last month, Indian hockey suffers due to ‘lack of unity.’
“Many times, India was a team of teams. It was a divided lot and that affected our performance. There are several reasons for this and ultimately talented players were affected,’’ said Bansal. “We always had talented and gifted hockey players. But lack of unity and the attitude of a few coaches affected the performance of our team,” said Bansal, who cited the example of how MK Kaushik guided India to Asian Games gold in 1998. “Kaushik had only two months to prepare the team. But he concentrated more on keeping the team united and that helped. India played as one single unit and we know the result,” Bansal said.
Asked if he too had used Kaushik’s formula during the Azlan Shah tourney, Bansal said: “Yes, to a certain extent. But many of the players are my wards and so I had little trouble managing them. Since I had no time to sharpen their skills I concentrated on preparing them psychologically.”
Despite widespread acclaim for helping the Indian team excel at Azlan Shah, coaching the Indian senior team is not on Bansal’s mind. “I am only concentrating on helping the junior team retain the Asia Cup,” Bansal said and added that the Indian juniors are well equipped. “The presence of four senior players makes us a very strong outfit. Moreover, we have a solid defence and an attacking forward line. We only need to work on our midfield. Hopefully, two weeks here at the camp will help us overcome this deficiency. “Pakistan and Korea are our main rivals. Like us Pakistan too have four to five senior players and Korea always come out with something new,’’ he added.