CHENNAI: Ever since winning the Asia Cup, the India women’s hockey team is keen on not getting carried away. They said in every interview: “2018 is an important year. We have lots to prove.”
Young captain Rani Rampal knows the tussle behind that. Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, and World Cup await her team next year. For her, mission 2018 is all about bettering oneself with every opportunity.
Apart from a 10-day bilateral exposure tour to Korea scheduled for February, 33 players have been training under coach Harendra Singh at a national camp in Bengaluru since November 26.
With just a week left for training proceedings (the camp ends on December 23), all corners of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) camp are abuzz with two words: strength and speed.
The urge to improve speed was seen explicitly when Hockey India (HI) conducted its second edition of the 5-a-side national senior championship in November, where the new ‘combined men and women’ category made its debut.
“When you are playing against men, you will automatically push harder. You know they are difficult to play, in terms of matching speed and strength. These kinds of tournaments should happen annually so that we get to learn. Sports like tennis, badminton, and squash have this mixed event. Now hockey has joined the bandwagon,” said Rampal from Bengaluru.
Though women players going up along men came into the limelight only after the aforementioned event in Pune, Rani said that even during training, they play with the Karnataka men’s side in order to better their pace.
During this almost-month-long camp, their coach emphasised on testing a few new players and see if they can keep up with demands of the senior team. With three-fourth of the camp attendance comprising of youngsters, it is quite evident that the team is willing to give more chances to them.
“If you see there are only six to seven senior players here. Even in Asia Cup, juniors did quite well. Apart from fitness, the focus is more on mental strength. It’s because we are training a young lot, who will be handling pressure when we play against higher-ranked teams. Hence we have psychology classes too,” said the 23-year-old.
Looking back at what has been a successful year for women’s sport, Rani felt that their gender is now receiving more appreciation as compared to how it used to be when she started playing.
“Not just this year, even in 2016 people acknowledged us. The team qualified for (Rio) Olympics after a gap of nearly 36 years.
There has been an upswing ever since. People have started to watch a lot of our matches and follow us on social media. Those feedbacks have been happening of late, which is really good.”
srinidhi@newindianexpress.com