India belong among world’s elite eight teams

Floris Jan Bovelander, the former Netherlands star and penalty corner specialist who has won the Olympic gold and the World Cup, is a partner in the Jharkhand hockey initiative. Bovelander, 51, spoke to the media on Skype in Khunti.

Excerpts This initiative teaches a lot of life skills through hockey, but in the end, for talented players there should be a place where they are able to get the most out of themselves. The academy will give players that opportunity.

It also very important to improve the girls, who I have seen do not enjoy the same facilities like the boys. I would like to include them in the academy in two years. There were hardly four or five countries which had both the men’s and women’s teams in the Olympics, so it was a good development for India.

The Hockey India League is one of the best tournaments in the world, which gives enough inspiration to players here to grow in the sport. The area where India needs to work on is the grassroots. Also, in India you learn to play on artificial turf when you are 16 or 18 years old by which time you have already developed a style not suitable for the surface… But in the last few years, Hockey India has done a good job by getting good foreign coaches to develop the western style of play. I hope this will popularise the sport again.

I find things very close from the quarterfinal stage onwards in big tournaments. Argentina becoming Olympic champion is big news but I do not think they can be called the best. There are eight very good teams and

India belongs to that group.