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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, July 21: Air India Academy’s first foray into the junior National hockey competition last year had gone all the way to the challenge round when they ran into the Border Security Force (BSF) wall. Their forwards ran out of ammunition, then. However, there were no chokers this time around.
The academy boys from Delhi showed an insatiable hunger for goals and flair for modern hockey as they claimed the junior National title comfortably, a fortnight ago at Bangalore.
The academy was set up at the beginning of this decade with a bunch of talented juniors brought under the `drawing board expert’ P A Raphael. Most of those youngsters, picked from the junior national coaching camp, soon found a place in the senior national side. Players from the first batch, Rajesh Chauhan, Rajeev Mishra, Virendra Singh, Ambuj Srivastava among others, are still among the best in the country.
After Raphael left for Thailand in 1995 to coach their national side, the flow of talent from the academy seemed to have suddenly dried up. There were no replacements for the `dream batch’ for a few years. Cricket was weaning away talent from almost all popular hockey centres, while boys from Punjab made a beeline for new nurseries back home — Punjab and Sind Bank and Border Security Force opened academies to support thier ageing senior sides. Then, players from southern centres also found a reason to stay home, the Sports Authority of India centre at Bangalore.
It was a tough road ahead for the Academy, drawing fresh talent mostly from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, with Delhi dying a slow death as a hockey centre. However, SAI coach Ajay Kumar Bansal and the Air India officials did not give up. They continued to nurture the dream and the turnaround came with the runners-up tag during the Delhi junior Nationals.
If Delhi was the turning point, Bangalore junior Nationals signifies the revival of this premier academy. Three boys of the academy — Prabhjot Singh (forward), Devesh Chauhan (goalkeeper), Deepak Thakur (forward) — have been included in the list of probables for a six-nation juniors tournament to be held in Poland in August. Their camp started in Bangalore on July 17.
Prabhjot, who was adjudged the best player of the junior Nationals, scored more than 20 goals at junior Nationals and is expected to graduate into the senior side soon. In fact, the selectors wanted him for the senior team’s camp at Amritsar, but later decided to let the young man gain more exposure in his age group.
Deepak Thakur has already entered the senior ranks and toured with the team to Germany and Belgium last month. He also had an outstanding tournament in Bangalore. Goalkeeper Devesh Chauhan is expected to join the senior camp soon. Another academy boy Anurag Raghuvanshi (deep defender) has been invited to the senior camp being held in Amritsar.
Coach Bansal, while praising his boys for winning the title expressed disappointment at poor representation of the academy in probables list. "We beat all the teams by a big margin, and I feel that atleast two more of our boys, midfielders Sunil Yadav and Inder Singh Salaria, deserved a call," he said.
Among several of Bansal’s boys who have found a place in the national squad, the most well known is striker Gagan Ajit Singh, who was the highest scorer in Delhi junior Nationals. In the absence of Dhanraj Pillay, Gagan has been the chief goal getter for India in recent times and scored 11 of his team’s 20 goals in the series against Germany and Belgium last month. Others like defender Ajay Kumar and midfielder Anwar Khan are also in the Amritsar camp.
Academy’s road to Junior National title
