The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : Baskaran aiming for a triumph

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 02, 2006

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Sport - Hockey

Baskaran aiming for a triumph

V.V. Subrahmanyam

— Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

WORDS OF WISDOM: Chief coach V. Baskaran interacting with some players at the Indian hockey team's preparatory camp in Hyderabad.

HYDERABAD : The Indian team has begun its training in right earnest at Gachibowli sports complex's hockey stadium in preparation for the World Cup to be held in Germany.

The essence will be not just be playing well but on winning was the message from chief coach V. Baskaran as he monitored the training sessions that began on Monday.

Baskaran, the 1980 Moscow Olympics gold-winning captain, said that with such an objective in mind, there was a lot of emphasis on communication and that he had been having a series of one-to-one discussions and team meetings to drill this vital element into the psyche of the Indian team players.

"The boys have been told repeatedly how costly it is to concede goals in the dying minutes of a game. And also how they are unable to provide the required thrust to their attack in the last five to ten minutes," Baskaran said.

55 sessions

He said that the focus at the 10-day camp here would not be on any one specific area.

"It is a vast task that we have undertaken and we will do our best to form a winning combination," he explained. "I will be having about 55 sessions to mould this team and I feel this should be good enough to get results."

"It is good to play on astroturf after 25 days. It makes a lot of difference and I am pleased with the way boys are responding to the training sessions straightaway," said a contented Indian coach.

After a five-day intensive training session, the Indians will play some practice matches, which should give the coach a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the players.

With the specific objective of ensuring a high level of fitness amongst the players, physical trainer Knox has been drafted into the preparations. Knox has been an Australia under-25 player.

Positive attitude

On the World Cup campaign, Baskaran said: "We have to be positive in our attitude. Performance on a given day matters as it was evident by the latest Champions Trophy results," he said. Commenting on the Bimal Lakra episode, Baskaran made it clear that the player went on his own and no one threw him out.

Baskaran also emphasised that there will be no interviews of the players with the media as per the directive of the Indian Hockey Federation.

The probables attending the camp are Bharath Chetri, Adrian d'Souza, Dilip Tirkey, Kanwalpreet Singh, Harpal Singh, Sandeep Singh, Vikram Pillay, V.S. Vinay, Ignace Tirkey, Prabodh Tirkey, Viren Rasquinha, Arjun Halappa, Nitin Kumar, Hari Praasd, Gagan Ajit Singh, Tushar Khandekar,Rajpal Singh and Shivendra Singh.

Harendra Singh is the assistant coach.

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