I wish to share my views about the Indian hockey team's playing skills.
After witnessing the performances of the Hockey players representing the national team I must say that what we need to address is the basics of the game. If any one saw performances of our team in the recent Commenwealth games, one will understand what I am saying.
Our players lacked the idea of passing the ball to the next best positioned player at the right time and at the right place (position). Our players still clinge to the ball longer in the hope of "dodging" one more opponent than passing the ball to better placed player. Secondly, our plavers waste lot of time in back/parallel passes without any strategy and proper plan. The team's strategy must be to always build-up the moves and try to keep ball in opponenets' half of the ground and not to keep on passing the ball between defenders thus making forwards useless.
There are many other flaws, besides physical fitness, which the coach must improve before we can even think of getting counted in the first four top teams.
One +ive thing in hockey for fans is that the playground are of international standard. Hence we are able to get the best nations to play. This is something football federation should seriously and expeditously work on. Indian Hockey team has not performed well recent years. There are severla reasons. In a TV program it was shown the poor facilities for players. these people are treated like some refugees staying in railway coaches and sharing a room in some hostel. This is ridiculous. In some other incident star player dhanraj was insulted by the coach rajinder during a press conference. If a player has issues with team it should be sorted out more professionally.
