We have to win big tournaments: Rajpal
MOHALI: Terming India’s successful title defence at the Sultan Azlan Shah hockey tournament – where they finished joint winners with South Korea – as satisfactory, captain Rajpal Singh said there was always scope for improvement and lot of work still needed to done to make India among the best in the world.
Talking to TOI at his home on Tuesday, Rajpal said, “I will only be satisfied when we perform well in ‘real’ tournaments like the World Cup, Olympics and the Champions Trophy. The day we do that we can really say that Indian hockey has arrived.”
He said the team had had many changes to the squad which played in the World Cup, where India finished eighth. “We tried out new faces and some of them really excelled. Ravipal and Vikas Pillay had a great tournament and they have a bright future ahead,” he said.
India drew their first match against China, which is not a traditional hockey-playing country, but Rajpal was not that displeased with the performance of his team. “We were trailing them till the last minute and scored the equalizer in the last 10 seconds. This was a great confidence booster for the boys as they proved that they could last for the entire duration of the match,” he said.
Riding on this confidence, India went on to beat Pakistan, Australia and South Korea in the league phase. “Though Australia did not send the same squad which played in the World Cup, just beating Australia was a morale booster for the youngsters in the team. Pakistan also fielded a different team. But beating South Korea was the most satisfying as they had the same squad which donned the national colours in the World Cup,” said Rajpal.
On why the team went down 2-5 to hosts Malaysia, Rajpal said, “By the time we played them we had already made it to the final. In that match we experimented with new techniques and tested the bench strength. And as experiments go, the results can be spectacularly bad or spectacularly good.”