Throughout Sunday, the Indian team here had to focus on the game — and the fork on the left of their plates every time they had a meal. It was just one of the things that the team has been doing as it tries to live its World Cup dream.
Coach Harendra Singh has long been an advocate of team spirit over individual flair. For three years with the juniors before they ended up triumphant at the Junior World Cup in 2016, he had spent much time trying to forge a bond between the players, making them play for and with each other. Now, he’s trying the same with the seniors.
A day before India’s game against Belgium, the players had to wear mismatched slippers all day – one own and the other that of their roommate. A day before, they had to spend the whole day using both hands to lift a glass or bottle of water if they wanted a drink. The day before India played its opening game against South Africa, the team had to stay silent and resort to sign language to communicate. It might look weird for an onlooker but for Harendra, these things matter in the long run.
“Signals and signs help communicate in a noisy crowd. Keeping an eye out for the fork helps ensure right positioning. Using both hands helps develop a sense of balance. But most importantly, all these activities make a player alert all the time. Anyone who makes a mistake is punished and then you are looking out for the next target. That is what happens in a match as well, you keep an eye out on the opposition for a mistake and then pounce on it,” Harendra explained.
There are other small but significant things. Like being fined for earning a deliberate card during a game. Or using the words mai, tu, mera, tera (I, you, mine, yours) etc even during training. The punishment is same — 20 push-ups on the spot, regardless of where it may be, even if it is the hotel restaurant! With the juniors, he had also started making them wear nightgowns for mistakes, to be kept on till the next culprit is spotted. He is planning to begin that now with the national team as well.
At the Asian Games too, team members and staff had to wear a woman’s team kit and a wig for making a mistake and Harendra himself had to suffer on a number of occasions. “I don’t believe in making only players accountable. Responsibility starts at the top. All these rules are not only for the players but everyone in the staff,” he said.
Siegfried Aikman had called it one of Harendra’s unique qualities. “He is a people’s manager and spends a lot of time on the social aspect of hockey. He is paying a lot of personal attention to guys, which they have never had before, and he becomes family. And then everyone wants to do it for him, not for each other or themselves,” Aikman had said.
The coach has also given the players a 21-point checklist that they have to look at, think about and imbibe twice every day. “It includes on what my role is, what I have to do in a match and off the field, what is the team motto and target, what I shouldn’t do etc. It’s the same for every player, more like a team agenda sheet for the World Cup,” a player described.
The only thing Harendra has changed is his use of swear words during training. “It is now less than 10 percent of what it used to be, and it has happened after his stint with the women’s team. Honestly, it still feels weird sometimes, when we are expecting a string of abuses for a mistake but all we get is a glare, it is unnerving,” laughed defender Varun Kumar, one of the seven in the side from that junior squad and so used to his coach’s idiosyncracies.
Whether the experiments translate into another dream run for Harendra and his boys remains to be seen.
