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Team needs to raise its standards: Kaushik

Sports Reporter

M.K. Kaushik

NEW DELHI: The Indian women’s hockey team needs to raise its standards ahead of the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games next year. This observation came from Chief Coach M.K. Kaushik after he guided the side to title triumph in the inaugural Champions Challenge II tournament in Kazan (Russia).

“This victory will give a lot of motivation to the players and it is important because it came (at a time) when we are building the side. But what we have achieved is only 40 per cent of the target and there is a lot of work to be done,” Kaushik told The Hindu after the team’s arrival here in the early hours of Tuesday.

This is one of the rare wins for the team, which did not do well in the Olympic qualifier at the same venue last year.

Creditable effort

“The field might be slightly weaker, but the team should get its due. Last time we had lost to Belgium and this time we comprehensively beat them twice. We are on the right track.”

“But, in order to compete with higher ranked teams, we have to improve our standards — in both physical and tactical aspects,” Kaushik said.

Kaushik, who had coached the Indian men’s team to victory in the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games, thought the girls needed to improve in areas like penalty corner defence, rebound scoring and positional play in attack and defence.

Apart from the team’s success, individual performances of Surinder Kaur (Player-of-the-Tournament), Rani Rampal (top-scorer and youngest player) and midfielder Deepika Thakur stood out.

Same old story

The team’s departure had been an embarrassment for the authorities because of the transit visa glitch and the arrival too was no different with not one official from Hockey India present at the airport to receive the victorious girls.

Hockey India Secretary Mohammad Aslam Khan had this to say.

“Unfortunately, I was not in Delhi. Otherwise, I would have received them. It was decided by the coach that the girls would be given a break. So we had made arrangements for the players to leave for their homes. We will arrange a reception for them,” Mr. Khan said.

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