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How India's Olympic-medal winning hockey coach is now transforming its junior team

Nov 29, 2021 08:03 PM IST

Australian coach Graham Reid came straight from the Tokyo triumph to the drawing board, to prepare the junior team for the ongoing World Cup

In August, having reached the Olympic podium for the first time in 41 years, the members of the bronze medal-winning Indian hockey squad were being felicitated at ceremonies, attending talk shows and also answering Amitabh Bachchan’s questions at Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Graham Reid with India's junior team(Hockey India)
Graham Reid with India's junior team(Hockey India)

Meanwhile, the man who had steered the team to the medal in Tokyo had gone back to the drawing board. Graham Reid had now been entrusted with another job: guiding the Indian colts for the Junior World Cup.

Unlike the Manpreet Singh-led squad—a setup Reid has known for more than two years—the 57-year-old had only three months to know the junior players, break the language barrier and ingrain his ideas into the minds and muscles of the players. The expectations were high after delivering the country a medal in Tokyo.

Reid's immediate focus, as he tells it, was to be a “relationship coach”.

"Togetherness, keeping the team first... those sort of values are really important that can add (quality) quite quickly," Reid said. "Instilling it takes a bit longer. I am definitely a relationship coach, having relationships with each of these players is what’s really important so that when the chips are down those things can come to the fore. I have been working with them ever since I got back from Tokyo. You see them around camp but actually meeting them all, getting to understand them… I have to rely on (assistant coach BJ) Kariappa and some of the other senior players (for English translation) to get across the points,” said Reid.

The junior and the senior teams spent a lot of time together pre and post Olympics, playing practice matches against each other. While the colts were made to simulate the hockey styles of other teams to prepare the senior team for the Olympics, the juniors in return gained by playing intra-squad games against an Olympic medal winning team, even beating them a couple of times.

This practice was the brainchild of Reid, who, when he was not working on forging bonds with and within the junior squad, was teaching them how to press.

“It was more icing on the cake rather than having to rebuild anything," Reid said. "We have been trying to instil (among juniors) the way we press with the senior group. It is difficult in the timeframe but Kariappa spent a lot of time with the senior group during Covid so a lot of the exercises, drills, terminology that we use in the senior group has already been dribbled down to the juniors over the last 18 months. A lot of the work had already been done as part of an ongoing development,” said Reid.

For the time being, the drills and training seem to have worked, barring India’s shock loss to France in the opener, with the hosts achieving their first target of qualifying for the quarter-finals of the Junior World Cup. But the pressure and the real contest starts now.

Having already achieved an exalted status in Indian hockey in a short span of time and with India being the defending champions—even though it was a different generation that won the title in 2016—does bring additional pressure for the Australian. But Reid has a different mantra; he gets the boys to put themselves under pressure so that they perform at their best.

“There’s always pressure when you are the reigning champions of anything and certainly the Junior World Cup is no exception. The expectations are always there but five years in a junior cycle is a long time. But it still doesn’t take away from the fact that we are reigning champions,” said Reid. “Hopefully, people understand that it is a different team to that of five years ago. Expectations are really on us.”

Reid will stop working with the juniors at the completion of the World Cup but is likely to continue his association with some of them as they break through to the senior setup in the near future. The Junior World Cup is a great scouting ground. Seven Indians who played the 2016 Junior World Cup final in Lucknow against Belgium also ended up winning bronze five years later at Tokyo. Reid is keeping a close eye. Vice-captain Sanjay is currently the joint second highest goal-scorer of the tournament with eight goals—which includes two hat-tricks. Fellow drag-flicker Araijeet Singh Hundal isn’t far behind with five, including a hat-trick, while forward Sudeep Chirmako, who was Player of the Match against Poland on Saturday, has also made a mark.

“It is a good ground to find players for the senior team. It’s an opportunity when you get to see some of the exciting talent coming through. I am pretty excited about their prospects. There’s some good talent there,” said Reid. “It’s always exciting when you are dealing with new guys. This group will form some sort of a part of the future and that will be determined of course by how they perform over the next year.”

Next up is powerhouse Belgium on Wednesday in a rematch of the 2016 World Cup final which India won 2-1. The European country is the benchmark in senior hockey, being the reigning world and Olympic champions. Domestic league hockey has also kept the players tournament ready, unlike in India.

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