Fitness once again stumbling block in Indian hockey hopes

The Indian Hockey Federation IHF supremo KPS Gill, commenting on the Asia Cup performance in Chennai, admitted that the quot;fitness level of the boys needs to be worked uponquot;. In fact, quite often in the past, Gill has stressed upon quot;fitnessquot; as the key to Indian hockey’s revival.

Besides, quot;lack of fitnessquot; has figured on top of almost all the postmortem reports submitted by coaches and managers, and it is surprising why nothing tangible has been done so far on this front. Why is the federation shy of hiring physical trainers — for teams at all levels — from abroad?

This is not to cast an aspersion on the capabilities of the Indian trainers, but sports science has advanced by leaps and bounds and new innovations and techniques can only help our sportspersons gear up better for stern challenges ahead. For, modern hockey is not only about skills but also a lot about stamina and endurance where a player, playing in any position, is running for almost all of 70 minutes.

Interestingly, the Indian Women’s Hockey Federation IWHF had shown a positive mindset in this respect, inviting an American trainer to work with the senior and junior women’s teams. Unfortunately, the deal fell through.

Then, there are other grey areas like poor finish by forwards or poor penalty corner conversion. But these are problems which have to addressed again, at the grassroot level, and for that, the coaching system has to be streamlined. The Koreans, though lacking in skills, are tactically superior as they have the same system of coaching at all levels and the players adapt to change in coaches comfortably. This, of course, is no easy task for India, and may take years to crystallise.

Coming back to the juniors’ performance in Asia Cup, the IHF move to invite the whole team to the preparatory camp for Sydney Olympics is welcome. However, it was disappointing to note that the selectors have once again decided to ignore goalkeeper Ashish Ballal and forward Sabu Varkey.

Ballal and Varkey are experienced campaigners and their talent is beyond question. It is now more than a year that the two have been kept out of the national side for reasons not hockey. Given the logic that the best team be selected for Sydney, Ballal and Varkey deserve a chance to at least, prove their fitness and form at the Bangalore camp.