Hockey team on 'rectification' mission

India begin their campaign in the Champions Challenge hockey tournament in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, December 7, with a match against Belgium.

The tournament, which features the seventh to 12th-ranked FIH teams, is a curtain-raiser to the February 24 to March 9 World Cup, as all the teams on view have qualified for the quadrennial event.

India, which finished fifth in the Edinburgh, Scotland, qualifier in July, will be looking to assess what progress they have made since then as also gain a berth in the next Champions Trophy, in Cologne, Germany, which is guaranteed to the winner of the Challenge.

India last qualified for the Champions Trophy in 1995, and their last appearence in the tournament was in 1996 in Madras, as hosts.

With ten players from the team which won the junior World Cup and the rich experience of Dhanraj Pillay, Baljit Singh Dhillon, goalkeeper Jude Menezes, Lazarus Barla and Sabu Varkey, coach Cedric D'Souza has an embarrassment of riches at his disposal and is confident of a good showing, though he prefers to say he is using the tournament to "assess how much the rectification training the players were put through in the last ten months has paid off".

"There will be some experimenting but winning the tournament is a priority for us because the winners get a place in the Champions Trophy," he said.

Admitting that expectations from hockey fans at home are high after the junior team's World Cup success, D'Souza said any Indian team is always under pressure in any international outing.

"Here too there will be a lot of pressure and we have to deal with it. For us, the main thing is to play our game and take one match at a time," he said.

D'Souza said his boys are well-conditioned and fit, but he is hoping they will not repeat the mistakes at the World Cup qualifier which forced them to go through a harrowing time before making the finals.

However, he was quick to inform that with all his players in top form he is in a spot over whom to leave out and whom to play in his first eleven.

"There is a healthy competition in this team which has come about after the win in the junior World Cup. Which is really good. Now no player can take his place for granted. But that's my problem," he said, when asked to name his first eleven or 14 for that matter.

"As the World Cup will be played in KL we will try and give all the boys a chance to see how they fit into our World Cup plans. We now have the opportunity to test the conditions and get information on the venue and other teams, and that's what is important," he concluded.