Best Indian team in terms of fitness — Gill

“The preparation for the team has been going on for a long time. The camp has been progressing well and all the players, barring Dhanraj Pillay and Baljit Singh Dhillon, have reported,” IHF chief KPS Gill said.

While Pillay was expected to join the camp by Friday evening, Dhillon had sought persmission to attend to attend to his wife’s health, he said. Gill said the Federation has invited Egypt to play a few matches with the Indian probables from August 1-10 and after a brief rest, a 22-member squad will leave for Australia on August 20.

“We will take 22 players to Australia initially for training and the squad will be pruned to 16 before the closing date for submission of names. We want to take more players so that we can substitute a player in case of injury,” he said.

The team will train in Murwillunbah, near Brisbane, for a few weeks before moving to Sydney by September 9. The Indians open their Olympic campaign with a match against Argentina on September 17.

“This is the best team in terms of physical fitness to leave the Indian shores. There is a lot of cohesion among the players. There is also a lot of interaction between the players, coaches and the management,” Gill said.

He said the Federation had roped in the services of former Olympian Ranjit Singh, now settled in Spain, to assist the players in penalty corner conversions and goalkeeping.

“We have laid a lot of emphasis on physical fitness and a couple of other weak areas which need improvment. The coaches are working on them. We are also getting full back up from SAI,” he said.

Asked whether the Indian team required the services of a foreign coach to make them more adapt to the European style of play, Gill said, “There has been too much talk about foreign coaches. We recently beat Germany, Australia and Korea and we had an Indian coach.”

Stressing Indian coaches were competent enough to bring about the desired results, the IHF chief said, “There are only five or six good foreign coaches at the moment. The question is are they available to us. There is also the problem of resources.”

He said IHF had limited resources at its disposal and all development programmes were worked out taking the financial constraints into consideration.

On the IHF’s controversial sacking of six senior players after the Bangkok Asian Games which caused a flutter in hockey circles, Gill clarified that the players were `rested’ and that was necessary to prolong their careers.

“If we had not rested key players like Dhanraj Pillay at that time, he could not have sustained himself for so long. It was a decision taken in the best interests of the players,” he explained.

He cited the example of Korea who dropped a number of senior players after the Asian Games and rebuild the team with a clutch of junior players. “We had a bad experience during the World Cup. So I was a little unhappy with the euphoria generated by the Asian Games success. If we did not experiment, we would be left in a bad situation,” he said.

He said the Indian players had not trained as hard as they should have in the past and the results had therefore not been satisfactory. “I agree that the players should get more money, but IHF has limited resources. When the team goes out, it involves a lot of expenditure. We have to spend a lot of money for these trips,” Gill said.

Asked whether goalkeeper Ashish Ballal had also been `rested’ after the Asian Games or dropped on disciplinary grounds, Gill clarified that IHF had not been too happy with his not attending the conditioning camp in Bangalore.