Fitness is Indian hockey team’s biggest asset today.
Indian Hockey Transformation
Even though the popularity of hockey had gone down in the last few decades, efforts are being taken to revive interest in this game. India’s massive improvement in fitness and launching of the Hockey India League is helping the cause.
In the past, there was a phase when India was not winning many matches at the international level because the fitness levels of the players were not up to the mark (that applied to several other sports as well in India).
“I was told by a Dutch player that half the time, they knew they would win a game even before we walked on the turf. It was all in the body — the muscles, the strength, the body language, everything. We knew we could not match them either on the run or body tackles. We only had our skills to fall back on, and it wasn’t much to win titles,” senior hockey player.
However, that was more than a decade back and things have changed for Indian hockey. In fact, there’s been a huge transformation in Indian hockey.
Indian hockey players today have access to the best training facilities, world-class support staff, get International tours, and then they have the HIL (Hockey India League), which is a real game-changer.
Right from rubbing shoulders with the world’s best players, to providing a huge platform for the young players, hockey today is a viable career option with good money involved.
Hockey Has Become Faster
The change in format of hockey from two halves of 35 minutes to four quarters of 15 has made the game faster.
Speed in midfield and forward line is now essential. Most midfielders and strikers are only spending three to four minutes on the field on a given time.
But in those few minutes, they happen to work at very high speed before being rotated.
So we need to look at our fastest players and those who can repeat their fast efforts over two and three minutes. It’s very essential to be able to compete successfully internationally at senior and junior level.
Foreign Scientific Advisors to Improve Fitness Standards
Indian hockey is slowly inching closer to the top teams in the world – Argentina, Australia, Germany, Netherlands. Today, we are on par in terms of fitness and many other things. With the kind of training the players undergo, India is on par with the world’s fittest hockey teams, and this has certainly been one of the biggest improvements in recent times.
But the players need to improve upon their mental strength to perform against world-class opponents. The players will have to keep getting smarter at the mental aspects of the game. It was for this reason that before the Olympics, Indian hockey players underwent specialised psychology sessions in order to manage pressure situations better.
Hockey India has roped in several scientific and fitness advisors from abroad to improve the fitness of the senior and junior national teams — with the aim of producing better results in major international events, including World Cups and Tokyo Olympics.
Rising Fitness Levels of Indian Hockey Team
We doubt if you would ever get to see a hockey player like Dhyan Chand ever again in the future, as even India (traditionally known for producing skilled players) is focusing more on the fitness of young hockey players.
Fitness is the base of everything, not just for results on the field. It also increases a team and coach’s self-confidence in being able to execute any plan. If players are fit, they can adapt to any change, they can adjust to any tactic.
More junior Indian hockey players are now judged on their fitness, their ability to sprint, and not much on their skills. Strikers need to be quickest as they have to fall back while defending and then burst forward in high intensity during counter-attacks.
The selection criteria focus more on ‘sprinting’ abilities of junior players, on their physical fitness than on skills for selections.
“As per our selection criteria we will look at three areas: sprints is the first, followed by skill, while ability to play the game is the third. So someone can be extremely fast but not very skillful and still make the team. At the same time, someone who has less speed but is extremely skillful and has the ability to read the game well can also make the team”.
The hockey players are made to run distances of 10m and 40m. A timing of 1.75 seconds for 10m is considered ‘excellent’ and anything between 1.86 seconds to 1.95 seconds is counted as ‘average.’ For 40m sprints, a timing of under 5.30 seconds will all but guarantee a berth in the junior team while 5.51 to 5.70 seconds will be seen as average. These timings have been decided keeping in mind the world average.
India’s focus on improving fitness levels has resulted in big improvements. Although the Senior Indian team is still not able to beat big teams in major tournaments, the team has become much fitter and far more competitive internationally.
However, its the Junior hockey team that is showing glimpses of greatness. Not only with their skills, the junior team has impressed foreign coaches with their supreme fitness and agility on the field. Nowadays, rival coaches are concerned about the supreme fitness and quickness on the field — the constant outrunning of opposition, the ability to effect turnovers and attack, falling back to defend and the desperate grouping to repossess the ball.
“The Indians in that sense are pretty quick, they are fast to counter and can keep up the pace all through. It is not easy to beat them simply by constantly running any more, they have adjusted to the new format and here we see them adjusted to the old one too equally well, it is a very good measure of their fitness,” said German coach during the junior hockey world cup.
Indian Hockey Sponsors
Coal India turns sports sponsor for hockey, gains from the association
When public sector undertaking Coal India sponsored the Hockey India League a year ago, many thought it was a poor decision as there was no consumer connect for Coal India to establish (Coal India is India’s largest coal miner, supplying the resource to power, metal, and cement companies). Besides, many felt that the money coughed out was too high.
So was it really worth it?
“Hockey is our national game and we want more youth participation in it. We will also encourage football and will look at FIFA like options too in future. We have also committed to the national sports development fund to the tune of 25 crores each year for three years,” Coal India.
Broadcasters of the 2016 Hockey India League say that the tournament generated over 2.2 million fans on Facebook, a 49 percent year-on-year increase and saw an engagement ratio of 11.5 percent, a bump up over the previous year.
Now that’s impressive growth, not many probably may have seen that coming. But the fact is that sports is booming in India. Besides, non-cricket sporting activities in India such as hockey is attracting more audience and sponsors.
Coal India, therefore, has clearly gained from its association with the hockey tournament, thus silencing the skeptics. And now they propose to up the ante in the next few years. Well, its good news for sports in India.
Original story in business-standard. Read here.
History of Indian Hockey
Hockey historian K Arumugham says that in 1928, when the Indian team was on its way to Amsterdam, they played a series of exhibition matches in England. Seeing the calibre of the Indian team, England decided not to field a team for the Olympics as “they did not want to lose to a slave country”.
Between 1928 and 1956, India won six Olympic gold medals in a row, followed by a silver in ’60 and gold again in ’64. India could only manage bronze in ’68 and ’72 (the world started catching up), and won an eighth gold in the 1980 Moscow Olympics (most Western countries didn’t play as they boycotted the games). That was the last time India won a medal.
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