MAY 15: The Indian hockey team which started as hot favourites but lost the gold to South Korea in the final of the Junior Asia Cup at Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, arrived in the City on Monday morning.Speaking to this paper here, he said: ``Both against Malaysia in the semifinal and South Korea in the final, Indians could not maintain the tempo in the second session. Certainly, our boys have to improve their fitness level.''Gill said the present bunch impressed him with their level of talent and added that the exposure provided to the team prior to the tournament had stood them in good stead. He exhorted the boys not to lose sight of the goal and work for a gold in the World Cup.Indians under coach Vasudevan Baskaran had won the silver medal at the last Junior World Cup in Milton Keynes in 1997 after finishing second to Pakistan in the qualifiers at Singapore.Talking about the final, Gill said the Indian defence failed to monitor the break-away raids of the Koreans. ``Marshalling of the defence had to be tightened,'' he felt. He said the whole junior team would join the camp for the Olympics at Bangalore from May 25.Gill also appreciated the standard of umpiring in the tournament and had a special word of praise for Md Muneer, the Indian umpire at the meet. He had a good report and the crucial Korea-Malaysia match was handled well by him, the president said.Now the focus would be on Olympics. ``Instead of sending the team abroad, we would be inviting Egypt, Argentina and England for a test series. Apart from, that we would also play five test matches with Malaysia in the south so as to reduce the travelling time for the visitors. In all, we would be playing about 15 to 20 international games before the Olympics,'' he said.A detailed training schedule has been drawn for the Olympics and Olympian Gurbux Singh would be called to the camp to help the defenders, he said. The team for the Olympics would be announced in mid-August and it would travel to Sydney well in advance to get acclimatised, he added.
