Tit Bits Here and There – IV

Bharat Chetri sports a stud in his left year. Anything special, anything lucky? I asked him. “You don’t know? Everybody in Bangalore wear like this”, he replied.

There is a main gate to enter Azlan Shah Stadium here, which is always locked. As happens everywhere, there is a small mesh way a bit far off from this which public normally uses. I asked why you make a beautiful gate and then keep it under lock and key all the time? One of the officials replied, “That gate will be opened only to the car of His High Highness”. This stadium named after him virtually means it too!

Pakistan manager Kwaja Junaid is a good communicator and has good PR sense as well. He spotted Chinese coach after his turn of press conference, and hugged him and said, “This is also my team”. Kwaja coached Chinese team about a couple of years in the past.

Indian goalkeepers PR Sreejesh and Bharat Chetri made all the scorers dance before them on the turf with good performances, but it was their turn to dance, virtually, the other day. The duo were on stage to dance in the official dinner, and they are reasonably professional there also.

When asked about recall of some former players, Pak manager Kwaja said, “We are testing here, they are rusting there”.

Hockey India’s President Vidhya Stokes was the only lady among the ten dignitaries who were seated on the dais during the official dinner.

One of the Indian coaches here, Harendra Singh, is often spotted with a camera, clicking with relish, it seems he enjoys this.

Most people here predict India-Australia final, and none wants to go further, take the risk of predicting the Cup winner.

The main gallery of Azlan Shah stadium is afresh with new portraits. They changed old one with recent, Indian team that won the Cup last time is prominently placed. Must be motivating the players all the time they enter the stadium.

One of these days Indian team had an outing in the gymnasium in the same sporting complex where the hockey fields are also there. After strenuous time there, team returns to dressing room to take brief ice bath. Of course, you can always find a couple of our players giving a cool escape to the cool practice!

One of the coaches here, Gundeep Kumar, played Azlan Shah Cup many times. I asked what best memory he has, he was quick to reply:”I and RP Singh were contenders for the right wing in the late 90s. Coaches told whoever plays better here will be there for the 1989 Champion Trophy, so we fought very hard, ultimately I got the nod for the CT”.