M.S Unnikrishnan

Tribune News Service

‘Mum’ was the word during the launch of the Hero Honda 2010 World Cup Hockey logo launch here this evening, as the players and coaches had signed a contract with Hockey India not to speak to the media. Yet, captain Rajpal Singh and coach Jose Brasa broke the gag order to speak about the preparation of the team, though not about any controversy. The World Cup logo depicts a player with a hockey stick chasing a ball, with the tri-color in the backdrop embellishing the overall impact of the logo.

The Indian team will be leaving tonight for a week’s training in Madrid till November 30, ahead of the Champions Challenge Tournament in Argentina, from December 6 to 13. The team will also get a week’s time to acclimatise in Argentia before their pool matches, featuring Belgium, China and New Zealand, in the eight-nation tournament. If they win the tournament, they will qualify for the Champions Trophy, to be held in Germany in July next year.

The team looked trim, coherent, confident and disciplined. Rajpal Singh said they were going to play in the Champions Challenge as a team, and not to find faults in the team. He said whatever short coming were there in the team will be corrected along the way, though their main objective in Argentina would be to win matches.

Rajpal said at the coaching camp in Pune, the team management put thrust on build up and counter attack. “We don’t think of our weak points, as that would demoralise the team. But we have been working on preventing our tendency to concede goals in the final moments”, he added. Brasa said his idea of ‘total hockey’, with a blend of European defence and speedy Asian attack, was taking root among the Indian players, who were determined to regain the lost glory of Indian hockey.

He said it was indeed a problem with Indian team of running out of stamina and conceding goals in the last few minutes of the game, but he was working to set right the last-gasp guffa. He said though the players were fit and ready, he had no intention of playing all of them for full 70 minutes.

“We will play some of them for five-ten minutes. The coaching camp was excellent. The players are working hard, suffering a lot; they are very much motivated,” he added.

Hockey India adviser Anupam Gulati said the team, on return from Argentina, would train at the National Stadium, which was expected to be ready by then. India, who hosted the World Cup for the first time in 1981 in Bombay, was sparing no effort to make the 2010 World Cup in March in Delhi an event to remember, with the Indian team expected “to put up a decent performance”.

Gulati said after the World Cup draw was finalised by December 15, a four-nation tournament will be held at the National Stadium in Delhi from Januay 17 to 21 next year, which will be a test event for the stadium as well as the Indian team for the World Cup. The idea is to then excell in the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games in China in November, as the first two finishers in the Asiad will gain direct entry for the 2012 London Olympic Games.