Indian Express: Goalkeepers need to be perfect: PR Sreejesh

By Mihir Vasavda

28 December 2015

In his brief summation of India’s performance at the World League Finals earlier this month, Holland coach Max Caldas said the team’s current strength could also potentially be its Achilles heels. Caldas was talking moments after his team’s defeat to India in the bronze medal match and even though his opinions at times seem too frank, they are generally fair and hard to argue with.

The Argentine was talking about India’s goalkeeper PR Sreejesh. Caldas spoke about an issue most in the Indian set-up chose to ignore. Sreejesh, he said, was the key reason India have looked such a settled unit of late. Without him, Caldas had doubts if India would be as strong as they seem to be. It’s a huge shift for a team that was perceived as a one-man army not too long ago; that ‘one-man’ being skipper Sardar Singh.

But India’s two biggest achievements – the Asian Games gold in 2014 followed by bronze at HWL earlier this month – in the last decade have come courtesy Sreejesh. The 27-year-old underplays his role, saying the rotation within the squad is an important reason why India has started to do well. “We are maintaining a 25-member squad for Rio Games so that has kept a healthy competition within the team. If there are any injuries, we have immediate replacements. The depth in the core group has been an important reason why we are doing well,” Sreejesh said.

It’s ironical that Sreejesh mentioned depth in the playing group as the reason for India’s success. For, there has been a dearth of back-ups in his position. Indian hockey may have enjoyed two of its most successful years in recent history. It is an indication that the team is heading in the right direction but the other way of looking at those two achievements would be the team’s excessive reliance on Sreejesh during crunch situations to deliver goods.

It was evident against Belgium in the semifinals of the Hockey World League how much the other players depend on him when Oltmans did not mind playing a half-fit Sreejesh in the goal ahead of second-choice keeper Harjot Singh. Harjot has played just a dozen games since making his debut in 2013 and is yet to play a big-ticket match.

And while most other teams used the World League as a platform to test their bench strength, India were still trying to identify their first-choice playing XI. Sreejesh says the pressure of delivering results too is a factor that stops them from experimenting too much.

“One of the reasons is that the coaches do not want to risk failure. Even one defeat draws a lot of criticism and he is then targeted by the media. So it becomes difficult for them to experiment much,” Sreejesh had said in Raipur earlier this month.

“So while picking a team, the coach has to think about a lot of factors. He has his plans and we all work accordingly.”

This year, Harjot has played a couple of test matches in New Zealand and featured in the friendly series against Australia earlier this month. Even though that may not seem enough in terms of gaining experience, Sreejesh didn’t see it as a big issue.

Giving Harjot chances

“We are giving him chances wherever we can. We are planning that he gets equal opportunities so in case if something happens, he is ready to step in,” he said. “Aakash (third-choice keeper) and Harjot have improved a lot and that was seen during the camp with (goalkeeping coach) Dave Staniforth.”

Going into an Olympic year, Sreejesh feels every player will need some fine tuning, especially the goalkeepers. Despite being the team’s best player once again this year, he knows he is always just one tiny mistake away from being castigated. And he also knows that much of his success will depend on how well the defence line in front of him operates. “Normally, a goalkeeper has to be a perfect man. All my mistakes are visible so I have to keep my concentration all the time. But our defence is well settled so that makes my task easier. There is a lot of trust among us,” he said.

With the Olympics a little more than six months away, Sreejesh said the focus of the team was to be more consistent. “We can surely target a top-six finish, which will be a good improvement from our previous performance. The biggest advantage of the World League was that it gave us an idea as to where we stand at the world level. There is a lot of scope for improvement but as we enter the home stretch for the Olympic preparations, we know the biggest challenge for us is to remain consistent with our performances,” he said.