At 78, his heart beats for hockey and India

BHUBANESWAR: At 78, Avtar Singh Sohal’s passion for hockey remains infectious. Every big hockey tournament in India, the Kenyan hockey legend is there to witness it.
Simply put, you cannot take hockey out of Sohal nor can you take him out of hockey. With Bhubaneswar playing host to the Hockey World League (HWL) 2017, he could not have stayed back, could he?
Having played in Olympics, he has a phenomenal record of captaining Kenya three times. Yet, he has not lost a chance to give it back to the game which gave him such joy.

“I cannot think of life without hockey. After my last Olympic appearance in 1972, I decided to quit field hockey as a player and started my career as a coach,” said Sohal on the sideline of the event.
He was Kenyan national coach from 1978 to 1988. He also took up umpiring and was awarded an FIH International Umpires badge in 1980. He was a judge at 1988 Seoul Olympics and was nominated to FIH Development and Coaching Committee in 1988.

Despite a legacy of hockey in Kenya, his heart throbs for India and he can chat hours on end about how India can regain its glory. “The Europeans learnt basics of hockey from us Asians and are now teaching us. Time has come, we should learn from them and teach them back,” he says.The two Asian giants India and Pakistan are placed 6th and 13th place in the World ranking and efforts must be made to put the two teams among the top four, says the Kenyan legend.

In terms of skills, he says, Indian players are the best but they must learn the tricks of fitness and stamina from the European teams. The new rules and synthetic grounds put Asian teams on the back-foot. Teams like Argentina, Australia, Belgium and German are ahead because of their power and physical strength, Sohal points out.

“If you are 100 per cent fit, you cannot play hockey in the present scenario. You must be 200 per cent fit for international matches. Indians have to work in this direction,” he said.Known as ‘Tari’, the veteran says India has all it takes to get back into top four. Players are getting great infrastructure, scientific coaching, diet, and money. “They must think about hockey all the time to break into the top four,” he signed off.