Indian men’s hockey team’s Olympic glory is just like children looking for the cookies in a jar. It there right in front of you, but out of reach. And as a kid, either you strive hard to get to it or dream to grow bigger to get your hands on it.
Indian men’s hockey has been dreaming to grow big for a very long time now. But as we grow bigger, the jar of cookies is placed even higher. In Tokyo 2020, Manpreet Singh and his men finally managed to get their hands on the jar. Now the cookies are within our reach, but the jar is broken.
Indian men’s hockey is just like the Pakistani cricket side – totally unpredictable. On a given day they’d beat the best side in the world, on an off day they’d lose to the most unexpected of all oppositions. Keep that for another day let’s focus on how we got to the cookies in the first place.
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Ever since our debacle in Rio 2016 Olympics, the men’s hockey team has seen four coaches at the helm of the team. After Roelant Oltmans was axed, Sjoerd Marijne was given the charge. After his short stint, the coaching baton was passed on to our very own Harender Singh. Failure at the 2018 World Cup in Bhubaneswar saw Harender’s exit and the arrival of Australia’s Graham Reid.
Amid all this shuffle and reshuffle the core group of players in the team was the constant. The boys went through a series of changes in the playing style until it stopped at Reid.
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Reid, himself a silver Olympic medallist at Barcelona Games and a bronze medallist at the 1990 Lahore World Cup could only share the scent of victory with the team and how to reach it.
Working with a scientific advisor for the men’s team South Africa’s Robin Arkell, the team saw a tremendous increase in their fitness. Although during his stint too, Harender focused mainly on fitness among other aspects of the game.
But it was Arkell who turned things around for this team. To compete at the top level, India needed to be the toughest and the fittest side and they did not take that aspect so easily.
Speaking to a website, captain Manpreet declared that Indian men are at par with others in terms of fitness, “Our fitness levels are awesome. We have close to 13 or 14 players who have aced the yo-yo test. That is something that we are proud of. For the goalkeepers, the minimum is 20 points and our custodians have even scored 21 to 22 points. 24 points are our maximum on the test for us. Another advantage of having a good fitness level is that our mental strength is also in good shape.”
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Then were a few warmup drills like clap push-ups, skipping, and stretching of various body muscles. Players were asked to focus mainly on the upper body during the warm-up which lasted for around 10 minutes. The players then followed it up with the main fitness session that included barbell counter movement jump (2 sets x 12 repetitions), barbell push jerk (2 sets x 12 repetitions), lateral broad jump (2 sets x 12 repetitions), and barbell hang pull (2 sets x 12 repetitions). Players were given a minute’s break between each set of workouts. Arkell said he tries to keep the training schedules short, but includes high-intensity exercises.
Just like women, the men too were part of the data-crunching process where GPS was used to track every aspect of their body during games and the response. Even men were asked to upload a lot of their data on Google Docs.
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That’s the fitness part, however, India’s on-field performance at the Tokyo 2020 Games is not a flash in the pan. They’ve been producing some class results against some of the top teams.
In the FIH Hockey Pro League matches played in early January of 2020 and April 2021, India defeated Netherlands 5-2 and 3-3 (3-1 in penalties); got the better of Belgium in one game 2-1 and lost the other close encounter 3-2; lost 4-3 to Australia in one and won 3-1 in penalties in the other; twice beat Argentina 3-2 on penalties and blanked them 3-0 in another.
Having spent most of his time in the camp conducted at SAI Bangalore, Reid said he was well-versed with the notoriety of Bengaluru traffic. So he named one of his drills, “playing through the traffic.”
‘Playing through the traffic’ is a drill where a player gets through a mass of bodies into the opposition box. That seemed to have worked well in Tokyo.
While the teams in Europe and Argentina got the chance to play Pro League even during the peak of the pandemic, India’s rising cases deprived them of such luxury. In the last year, India managed two international exposures. A set of Pro League matches against Argentina in the Pro League and a few games against Germany.
“We did play well against Argentina and Germany. We knew exactly where we were going with this. The boys were playing according to the play,” Reid had analysed.
But then there was one fact that really bothered the India coach, the Indian forward line. In Rio Olympics, India scored 10 goals, seven of them through penalty corners. The strikers just froze in front of the goal, missing sitters.
Before leaving for Tokyo said it was a concern, but a work in progress. “I agree with you. It’s a concern. But I also think we’re creating opportunities. For the next four weeks, the focus is going to be on trying to convert the open field opportunities. If we have a realistic chance to get on that podium, then we need to be converting both – penalty corners and field goals. I have definitely been focusing not only on creating those opportunities but turning them into quality opportunities,” Reid had told this correspondent.
And their focus on strikers did pay off. Reid was right, to get even close to the podium India needed to score field goals, besides scoring from penalty corners. In Tokyo, India scored 25 goals in the campaign, 12 coming from the field and 10 from penalty corners and three penalty strokes.
With their bronze medal finish, men’s hockey has progressed from men-in-progress mode. Hockey India now needs to capitalise on the achievement of these men and take the sport all over the country.
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