Bhubaneswar
\nIndia\u2019s chief coach Harendra Singh on Tuesday defended presence of several junior players in the squad for the FIH World Cup, saying they are good enough to create history.<\/p>\n
The current Indian team has seven out of 18 players from the junior World Cup squad, which under Harenedra clinched the world title two years ago in Lucknow. Junior players such as Harmanpreet Singh, Varun Kumar, Sumit, Mandeep Singh and goalkeeper Krishan Bahadur Pathak were selected in India\u2019s squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cConstitution gives us the right to marry after 18. So this is not a young team. It\u2019s a team that can create history,\u201d Harendra said on the eve of India\u2019s opening match against South Africa on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to have patient. Selectors have considered the young players to be good enough to wear India colours, so we need to be proud of them. Every player in the team understands it. My advice to the players would be to stick to the basics and strategy and consider crowd as 12th man and use their energy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Citing the example of Ireland, who went on to win the women\u2019s World Cup earlier this year despite being rated as underdogs, Harendra said India first aim would be to top Pool C and qualify directly for the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid anyone think Ireland will reach women\u2019s hockey World Cup final and Croatia will make it to FIFA World Cup final. Every team works on their strategy. It\u2019s about that particular day. We want to top the pool and avoid crossovers because then we will get an extra day and know who we will play in the quarters,\u201d the chief coach said.<\/p>\n
Eight-time Olympic champion India\u2019s only glory at the World Cup came way back in 1975 at Kuala Lumpur when Ajit Pal Singh and his men created history for the past masters of the game.<\/p>\n
Since then India has failed to match the standards of the Europeans Netherlands, Germany and Australia, who have been ruling the game for over four decades now.<\/p>\n
The inability to defend the Asian Games title earlier this year will remain Harendra\u2019s biggest failure but the coach said that episode is a thing of the past now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hard fact is that all of us have forgotten the Asian Games defeat and you should also forget. We learn from history, gain experience but there is no point recalling it. We took collective responsibility. We don\u2019t talk about it now in our meetings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ranked 10 places above world no. 15 South Africa, India will go into their tournament-opener as overwhelming favourites.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that the first match is important in every tournament. It releases 40 to 50 per cent of pressure. We want full points from the first match. But for points, we can\u2019t forget and sacrifice the basics of hockey, the strategy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won\u2019t compromise on playing attacking hockey against any team. We want to think ahead of the opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n
With two matches scheduled for each day, there are significant gaps between matches in the 16-team World Cup and Harendra supported the format, saying it will help all the teams to come out with fresh legs in every game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI support this format as a coach. Hockey is a fast-paced, result oriented, highly demanding game. It will help us to come out with fresh mind and legs in every match,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bhubaneswar India\u2019s chief coach Harendra Singh on Tuesday defended presence of several junior players in the squad for the FIH World Cup, saying they are good enough to create history. The current Indian team has seven out of 18 players from the junior World Cup squad, which under Harenedra clinched the world title two years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48530,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48531,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48529\/revisions\/48531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}