The Asian Age

Harpreet Kaur Lamba

New Delhi

Aug. 17: Breaking with tradition is not always the easiest thing to do, but when Jose Manuel Brasa forced the Indian hockey team to adopt an out-of-the-box training technique, he knew he was taking a big risk.

For the first time ever, the squad shunned the tried-and-tested 4-4-3 formation of play and faced top-ranked teams with hardly two months of preparations under the new method. There were no fixed playing positions, no full-backs, and also no certain names in the playing XI. The players were drawn out of their comfort zones and asked to perform in the toughest of conditions.

The team finished their 25-day Europe tour with a creditable 3-3 draw against fourth-ranked Holland on Sunday, and Brasa finally heaved a sigh of relief.

“Relief? You know if the experiment would have backfired, people would have been happy to cut my neck. It was a big risk,” Brasa told this paper from Holland. “When we held Holland yesterday, almost all my aims for this tour were fulfilled. Good results overall are a problem for the future.”

India played a total of 10 tests against Holland, Spain, England and Belgium, all teams ranked above them. They managed to win at least one game against the three, barring Holland.

Said Brasa, “We played all the matches without full backs, or only with Sandeep Singh on occasion. We played much more attacking hockey and even some of the Indian coaches in the staff were surprised.

“For me personally it was very funny playing the three games against England and beating them without any ’full backs’ as you call these defensive players. We tried many things. Some times we pressed full, some times we tried blocking the opponents in the midfield. Man-to-man marking was also imposed very strictly,” he said.

In a bid to identify the core group for the World Cup in Delhi next year, all the 22 players were given an equal amount of time on the field. Brasa, at times, even benched the top 5-6 players, asking the juniors to step up and take control.

“Our objective on this tour was to watch carefully the performance of every player in pressure situations, and his capacity to adapt himself and follow the new instructions A short number of players showed that they probably will be at the World Cup, but most of them will have to work hard to merit a place,” the coach explained.

The changes induced though weren’t easy for everyone to follow. Said a team member, “Things cannot change overnight for sure, but we surely improved with every game. I can give you an instance here. In the opening five games, we conceded as many as 19 penalty-corners but let the opposition score only thrice. Now to do that without a defence line, I think it says a lot.

“Similarly we converted three of the seven corners in these games, and that too without Sandeep. In nutshell soon the days will fade away of one special position.”

Brasa, on the other hand, was satisfied in the manner the team performed. “Winning was never on my mind. We had a psychological aim, and that was to convince the players that they can beat any opponent on this tour, at their home and with their umpires, Brasa said.

Lack of technology, though, was one thing that gave the 55-year old many sleepless nights on his first tour. “I finished very tired on this tour due a large number of hours that I had to work during nights to partially solve the lack of technology.

“It is only less than 200 days to the first match of the World Cup in Delhi and if the technology does not arrive for the next camp in Bengaluru, the hope of winning a medal at the World Cup will fly. The dramatic part of the situation is that if it flies, it flies for ever, because the lost training days will be unrecovered,” Brasa fumed.

“Countries get to host major tournaments like the Olympic Games and the Worlds once every 35 years. Those players are lucky to have an opportunity to perform in front of their home crowd. If you achieve something big, it will be historic.

“Let’s not kill these hopes with mere bureaucratic excuses,” was Brasa’s final word.