Hockey Junior World Cup: The hard times that bind them all
In the build-up to the World Cup, coach Harendra Singh lost his brother, Santa Singh his sister and Krishan Pathak his father.
By Mihir Vasavda
Just days before the junior hockey team left for its first tournament in 2014, coach Harendra Singh received a call from his family informing him that his cousin – an Armyman – had sacrificed his life while fighting insurgents in Mizoram.
Midfielder Santa Singh, a jovial 20-year-old, was relaxing with some of his teammates after a strenous training session in mid-2015 when he learnt about the death of his sister back home in Sant Nagar, near Chandigarh.
In July this year, as Krishan Pathak geared up for his debut international tournament, a tour to England, his sister from Nepal called to break the news of their father’s passing away.
The junior India hockey team was crowned world champions after a gap of 15 years, when they beat Belgium 2-1 in the final. Behind the joyous Sunday evening scenes are tragic moments that went a long way in forging a strong bond among the players and shape the character of this team.
The Johor Cup in Malaysia in October 2014 was the first time Harendra had a proper assessment of his players. He had been appointed coach six months earlier, but they had been involved only in camps.
The team management decided to leave five days before the tournament began to ensure the players were properly acclimatised. For a majority of the players, this was their first international tour. On the day they were supposed to leave, Harendra got a call from his family. His cousin Mukesh was martyred.
“I did not know how to react. I called my players to the meeting room and told them what had happened,” Harendra says. “(Assistant coach BJ) Kariappa insisted that I return to my village to complete the rituals. Since the team was going five days in advance, he said I could join them before the tournament began.”
But Harendra refused. Abandoning the team ahead of its first major tournament would set a bad precedent, he felt. “I felt it was necessary to set an example. To achieve team goals, you need to make individual sacrifices. That’s the message I wanted to give to the boys,” he adds.
This wasn’t the only tragic incident Harendra suffered as he prepared his bunch of world beaters. In December last year, as the team’s preparation entered its home stretch, Harendra’s son injured his right eye in a freak accident while playing football. His retina was damaged to such an extent that 80 per cent vision was lost in the eye.
Others in the team too made sacrifices. Santa Singh, who started in the midfield in every match of the tournament, chose to skip his sister’s funeral last year while back-up goalkeeper Pathak did not travel to Nepal for his father’s last rites because he wanted to travel with the team for one of their most important exposure tournaments before the World Cup in July.
Galvanizing effect
These incidents brought the team together, Harendra says. “We have a Whatsapp group so everyone gathered in the team meeting room within five minutes. And they would not let the player who suffered the loss stay alone even for a moment. Someone or the other was there to take care of him,” Harendra says.
The coach himself focused on the emotional and psychological needs of the players, knowing well that these are the two key areas where Indian players had invariably faltered. In his first meeting with the players, he reminded them of the Sydney Olympics debacle, where India conceded a late goal against Poland to miss out on a semifinals berth.
“I told them that Indian teams of the past would get too emotional at times, which cost them a lot,” Harendra, who began as a coach in 1998 and has won nine gold medals since, says.
Harendra was a part of the coaching staff back in 2000 as well. He is the ultimate survivor. Various federation presidents have come and gone, the association itself was dissolved and formed again, and a dozen other coaches have been employed and sacked. But Harendra, regarded as one of the most technically sound coaches, has stayed on.
It’s hard to think of a player in the last decade or so who would not have been coached by Harendra at some point in his career – be it with the junior or senior India teams or domestically with Air India, CAG or in the HIL.
He has coached every junior World Cup team since 1998, except the one in 2009. He was in charge of the team in the build-up to the 2001 World Cup, which India won, and was briefly involved with the team that took part in the 2013 edition. They say India had the best generation of players for those two editions. But they were all individualistic in nature.
The hallmark of this team is its unity. And that, Harendra says, is a result of the hard times they have faced. “As a sportsman, sometimes you are not there when your family needs you the most. It hurts,” he says. “But the sacrifices are worth it. We faced all problems together as a team. That’s why we won the World Cup.”