The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : Indian team in good nick: Joaquim Carvalho

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Wednesday, Aug 22, 2007
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Indian team in good nick: Joaquim Carvalho

S. Thyagarajan

— Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

SOUNDING CONFIDENT: Joaquim Carvalho expressed hope that his visit to Chennai for the first time as the chief coach would be fruitful for the team.

Chennai: A perceptible measure of optimism was apparent when the chief coach, Joaquim Carvalho, estimated India’s strength and evaluated the chances of retaining the Asia Cup hockey championship here on Tuesday.

Carvalho was interacting with the media even as the final stretch of the coaching camp got under way at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium.

The sessions will go full stream from Wednesday when all the players reach the venue.

Hoping his visit to Chennai for the first time as the chief coach would be a fruitful for the team, which is defending the trophy won at Kuala Lumpur in 2003, Carvalho conceded the team is in good nick and raring to go for before the first match against China on August 31.

Carvalho felt that playing a tough team like China in the opener was good than in the middle of the programme. His assessment stemmed from favourable factors like home pitch, weather and spectator support.

He agreed that China had been playing well in competitions and came off well in the Good Luck tournament held as the experimental event to test the venue at Beijing last week.

Acknowledging that the Asia Cup was a part of the preparations to the more important Olympic qualifier in the first quarter of 2008, Carvalho felt that a trophy triumph here would boost the morale remarkably as much as the world rating before the qualifiers.

Emphasis

Carvalho said the emphasis of the month-long camp at Bangalore was clearly on penalty- corner conversions and fitness. He was happy that in both areas the players had shown considerable improvement.

He added the process would continue in the short-duration camp here.

In fact, Cavalho has invited the under-21 star, Divakar Ram for the camp.

Divakar did remarkably well in penalty-corner hits in the recent Junior International at Monchengladbach (Germany).

However, he stressed that a lot of work was completed in the area of scoring field-goals, which, he asserted, was the major strength of the squad.The chief coach was convinced that the team now was more homogenous than before. The balance contributed to reducing the load on each player.

Responding to the question of a big contingent of Indians slated to figure in the German league shortly after the Asia Cup, Carvalho disagreed with the suggestion that such a stint would sap the energy of the players impairing their physical fitness. He said, on the contrary, the tough league programme involving players from Holland, Pakistan, Korea and Egypt would go a long way in sharpening the skills of the Indian players.

Expert coach

He was also not averse to the idea of having expert coach for penalty corners, and added the team benefited a lot during its stint in Germany before the Champions Challenge.

Earlier, K. Jothikumaran, Secretary, Indian Hockey Federation, while welcoming the gathering, wished the coach and the players the best of everything in the tournament. He added that all arrangements were in place for the prestigious event.

He announced a slight change in the schedule on the opening day. All the five matches on August 31 will be held at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium.

The two encounters —Singapore vs. Malaysia and Thailand vs Bangladesh — have been shifted from the YMCA College of Physical Education.

The three playersTushar Khandekar, Gurbaj Singh and Adrian DSouza, along with Divakar Ram had a workut under the watchful eyes of Carvalho and assistant coach, Ramesh Parameswaran.

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