By Anand Philar, IANS
Chennai : Indian hockey team’s preparations for next year’s Olympic qualifying tournament in Santiago, Chile, is progressing smoothly and on the right track, according to chief coach Joaquim Carvalho.
“I am extremely happy at the progress the players have been making at the camp. The good news is that we have seen plenty of talent among the junior boys who I reckon should soon be ready for bigger challenges,” Carvalho told IANS from Hyderabad.
Without a major international commitment between the Asia Cup in September to the Olympic qualifier in Chile (March 1-9, 2008), Carvalho and his support staff have been hard at work rectifying mistakes spotted at the various competitions this year besides grooming the juniors.
“We only have a four-Test series against Belgium and a 10-day tour of Australia in January before the Santiago event. But we have utilised this period to work on the boys, especially the penalty corner conversion and defence. I am happy to say that there are a few young players who have shown a lot of promise and potential,” Carvalho said.
He pointed out that one of the main objectives of the ongoing development camp in Bangalore was to identify and prepare a set of back-up players for the seniors.
“I don’t want to depend solely on the current India players. We should not get into a situation like we did last year when we lost Sandeep Singh (drag-flick specialist) just before the World Cup and did not have a ready replacement. We brought in an inexperienced Raghunath and it did not work well for India,” Carvalho observed.
“To this end, we would like to have a set of players who, at a moment’s notice, can replace a senior in the event of injury or whatever. This has been one of our primary objectives at the camp,” he said.
Coming for special mention were defenders Diwarkar Ram and Sameer Baxla, forwards Anwar Ali and Bruno Lugun. “There are a few talented midfielders too and overall, I am pretty happy with the kind of talent we have,” the coach said.
Of the lot, Baxla, who was part of the Indian junior team that took part in an eight-nation tournament in Monchengladbach, Germany, earlier this year, is a Dilip Tirkey in the making, according to Carvalho.
“Baxla has a very athletic build, strong and has a powerful hit. I have not seen another fullback with such a powerful hit after Dilip Tirkey. We do need a good hitter who can come up with long clearances to relieve pressure, just like Dilip does. Baxla is not a drag-flick specialist, but he has been shaping up well as a deep defender in the Dilip Tirkey mould,” Carvalho said.
As regards Lugun, who is being spoken of very highly and was an automatic choice for the senior Indian team, however, missed all the three international engagements this year owing to hamstring injury.
“Bruno is hugely talented and currently he is undergoing intensive physical training and has been responding well. Hopefully, he should be back to peak fitness soon and he will definitely lend more sharpness to our attacks,” he said.
Similarly, Diwakar is being groomed as a drag-flick specialist and as a cover for Raghunath.
“Both of them have been coming along nicely and we are putting in a lot of time at penalty corner drills,” Carvalho said.