Team will focus on conversion rate: Harendra
LUCKNOW: Fresh from a weeklong break, the Indian men’s hockey team will begin its final phase of preparation for the Asian Games, starting August 18 at Jakarta/palembang, at Bangalore from Wednesday.
The camp will be attended by the Asian Games-bound squad of 18 and seven standbys.
Over the next 11 days, the team will fine-tune its preparation and finalise strategies for the mega event as this would be an opportunity for them to prove its supremacy in Asia. India are the defending champions and a gold in Asian Games would help them secure a spot for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“We will be starting high-intensity training after a gap of almost one week. The rest was much-needed after a hectic schedule where the players played high-tempo matches against Bangladesh, South Korea and New Zealand,” chief coach Harendra Singh said on the eve of the camp.
“We will continue to work on all aspects of the game with specific focus on converting opportunities in the striking circle. We will work on the shortcomings noticed during the New Zealand matches. We want to seal the the job. It’s been six years since Andrew Strauss has retired but England’s indecision means they have tried out 12 opening combinations till the last series against Pakistan.
Cook knows what it takes to be No 1. “To become the number one side in the world, it takes two or three years of really good results and we haven’t had that. The team has been changing as we’re finding out different things about different players and different combinations,” he said on Monday.
Cook himself is yet to score a hundred this year but given the instability at t he other end, England need him to hold forte as long as possible. Captain Joe Root however will be under the pump to convert his fifties. The last time he did that was in August last year, against West Indies at Birmingham, the venue of the first Test against India.
Maybe this is the right time for Root to get into the groove, especially with Virat Kohli showing how to convert good starts into big hundreds. Root has more fifties (40) compared to Kohli (16) but the India captain already has 21 hundreds against Root’s 13. If Root keeps failing to convert good starts, England could be in real danger of losing a marquee series. Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler are more mature now but the reality is bulk of England’s batting will have to come from Cook and Root. India would want to exploit this vulnerability as early as possible. Olympic qualification by winning Gold,” he said.
Captain PR Sreejesh said the team will work on specific strategies. “In the next one week, we will sit together and work out a detailed plan.” he said.
“Playing against highly defensive teams like Korea and Japan will be testing for us because we might not be able to play with the kind of speed we are used to.”
He said the break has helped the team come back rejuvenated.
“Personally for me, I got to spend time with my one-year old son . Getting a short break before a major tournament is critical both mentally and physically,” said Sreejesh
“Though we were at home, we were given a specific regime to follow, including conditioning, running, swimming for recovery and gym,” he added.
Harendra sounded confident about team’s prospects at the Games which will be a stepping stone towards World Cup in Bhubaneswar. pace of Mohammad Nissar. “...And what a series of shocks they gave us Sutcliffe, Holmes, and Woolley out for 19 runs in 20 minutes!” the Cricketer wrote in their weekly report ending July 2, 1932. India ultimately lost that Test by 158 runs but nobody took them lightly after that.
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