Indian hockey team faced a setback in the recently concluded Commonwealth Games, as the Manpreet-led side failed to capitalize on the chances, what could be a possible goal, on numerous occasions. And leaking goals in the starting minutes made the situation even worst. This resulted in utter disappointment as the team returned home without a medal from CWG in hockey for the first time since 2006. A lot of questions were raised on coach Sjoerd Marijne’s selection policy, who picked young talents in the team over experienced campaigners.
According to a report by Zee news, a few of the senior Indian players were unhappy with Marijne’s selection policy and have arranged a meeting with the coach in order to sort things out.
“Some of the senior players in the team have had a meeting with Sjoerd and said that they should not overly focus on blooding in youngsters in place of experience, which will only put the team under pressure.
Experienced players like Sardar Singh and Ramandeep Singh were ignored for CWG and youngsters like Dilpreet Singh and Vivek Prasad were preferred over them.
“The level of Test matches and CWG isn’t the same. It’s unjustified to compare a Test-match pressure to that of a world-level tournament. You need experienced heads and legs on the pitch in crunch knockout games. Dilpreet, Vivek, Sumit, and Gurinder (Singh) caved into that must-win pressure,” a source told Zee news.
“It will not help the team win trophies.”
Another team source informed Zee Media that players are worried about the lack of coordination it is leading to.
“Look at Australia. They fielded almost the same team for both Sultan Azlan Shah (Cup) and CWG. And what we did? Sent a depleted team led by Sardar to Malaysia and then shuffled the pack inserting a few fresh cards in it. Whether we took out the aces in doing so is for everyone to decide. But Australia won both the tournaments and we finished fifth at Azlan Shah and fourth in Gold Coast.
“That tells you playing together over a period of time matters when it comes to coordination. Chopping and changing at the doorstep of a major tournament is recipe for disaster.
