Hockey: Harendra Singh’s ‘Dhyan Chand’ card to try and inspire the Indian women’s team towards LA 2028

But Harendra stood at the edge of the turf — a perk he could enjoy, being the high-performance director of the USA women’s hockey team — and dipped into nostalgia. “We have only read about Dhyan Chand dada in books or heard his stories. Standing there, I tried to imagine how they would have felt that day, what the atmosphere would have been like… You could feel it,” Harendra said.

He’d done this in Berlin, too. Way back in 1997, while playing club hockey in France, Harendra took a train to the German capital specifically to pay homage to Dhyan Chand at a stadium where he ‘won over Hitler with his skills’.

That day in LA, however, Harendra had ‘mixed feelings’ — that when the Games would return to the Californian city, instead of conjuring an American dream for India, he’d have been in the USA dug-out. “But I am a firm believer in karma and destiny. I signed for LA 2028 with Team USA and now, I’ll be there with the Indian team.”

Last year, after Harendra took over the reins of the India women’s team which was at its lowest ebb after failing to qualify for the Paris Olympics, among the first things he shared was the story of his visit to the stadium where India won the 1932 Olympics gold. “I told them, ‘a legacy was created in LA; can you do the same for future generations of women’s hockey?’”

The mere thought of it felt so far-fetched that even the then-captain Savita Punia didn’t immediately buy into it. At the time, the squad’s second-most capped player was wondering if she even ‘belonged’ in the dressing room. The players, Harendra said, didn’t “trust themselves or each other” and “questioned everything”.

A complete confidence crisis. “It was a tough job for him (Harendra),” Savita, five appearances short of 300, said. “Our morale was completely down. So the rebuilding phase had to start from there.”

The extent of the work that still needs to be done was seen on Tuesday during India’s FIH Pro League match against Spain. Sharper than a year ago going forward, but leaky defensively, meant India – after taking an early lead – lost 3-4; their first defeat of the season after a win and a draw against England.

If anything, it reinforced the fact that a turnaround still isn’t around the corner. Harendra knows this, and he isn’t too obsessed about results.

“I am looking at percentages. See how much we have improved in different aspects of the game like the number of circle entries, goal variety, shots taken, unforced errors… Look at those numbers and compare them with the Olympic qualifiers, last season of the Pro League and the Asian Champions Trophy,” Harendra said. “On some of these parameters, we are already doing well.”

Still, a few months ago this would have been even more Herculean. The team, the coach said, had to begin from zero. “I spoke to players individually. I asked them: ‘Do you want to keep crying over what has already happened or look to the future?’”

Ruthlessly, he told them that everything — fitness, mentality, culture, mindset and even playing structure — had to change. “They took it in their stride,” he said. “This is a young team with a lot of potential. But you are also number 9 in the world, so you are always going to play teams ranked above you… To see the change on-field, there had to be a culture shift first.”

Biomechanics experts were roped in to analyse drag-flickers, the captaincy was shuffled and the armband was handed over to forward Salima Tete, and the entire team spent sleepless nights in Kannur, where they had a military-style training camp to bolster the team’s mentality.

The biggest challenge, though, was to get the players to move on from the Paris ‘setback’. Savita had decided to hang her gloves. Harendra knew the veteran of 295 matches still had a lot to offer. “I told her, ‘You have seen the worst in 2016 (when India finished at the bottom at the Rio Olympics) and even that day you’d have thought why am I playing hockey! And five years later in Tokyo, you were fourth.’ The same cycle is repeating now, I asked her to guide the team, and take that responsibility.”

Savita added: “I didn’t know if I belonged (to the dressing room). The pain was too much.” Harendra’s words forced her to rethink her retirement. And the Dhyan Chand story convinced her to give the Olympics one more shot.

“We hadn’t thought of the LA Olympics like that until that moment. Of course, we were aware of India’s history in hockey so we always talked about Dhyan Chand Sir or Dhanraj sir. But the way Harendra sir told the story, we all had goosebumps,” she said. “It instantly lit a fire. We want to go there and not return empty-handed. It’s a chance for us to create a legacy.”