The Hindu : Sport : Prabodh Tirkey retained captain

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Sunday, Jun 03, 2007
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Sport

Prabodh Tirkey retained captain

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: Prabodh Tirkey of Indian Airlines was retained captain in the 18-member squad named by the Indian Hockey Federation for the Champion Challenge Trophy hockey championship to be held at Boom, Belgium from June 23 to July 1.

There were a few changes in the team with Dilip Tirkey and Sandeep Singh coming back while Raghunath and goalkeeper Bharath Chettri were made standbyes. Sardara Singh, who was down with an infection, is expected to be fit in a few days.

Coach Carvalho said that the championship at Boom is going to be pretty different from what they had encountered at Ipoh. "We are going to face teams, which have different styles apart from the continental ones and we have trained hard here .We worked on our weaknesses, with special accent on midfield, back and stroke conversions. We are confident of a good show.''

According to Carvalho, the physical conditioning work-outs that the team had with badminton coach Ganguly Prasad here had been rewarding . "I must say that he played an important role with his innovative methods and he knew each and every player's capability and worked on it accordingly", said Carvalho.

The team:

Adrian D'Souza, Baljit Singh; William Xalco, Sandeep Singh, Dilip Tirkey, Sunil Yadav, Gurbaaz Singh, Bimal Lakra, Sardara Singh, Vikram Kanth; Prabodh Tirkey (captain), Rajpal Singh, Bharath Chikkara, Roshan Minz, Tushar Khandekar, Shivender Singh, Prabhjot Singh and Damandeep Singh. Standbyes: Bharath Chettri, Raghunath, Ajitesh Rai and Yudwir Singh. Chief coach: Joaquim Carvalho, Coach: M.P. Singh, Assistant coach: M. Ramesh Parameshwaran.