Focus on youngsters as Indian women's team gears up for Asian Games on a tour of Germany, Spain

Mumbai, July 5 (IANS) With a mixture of some junior and senior players in the squad, the Indian women's hockey team takes off for Germany and Spain for a series of matches that will help assess its preparations for the upcoming Asian Games in September.

The next few months are quite crucial for the Indian women's hockey team as it embarks on a make-or-break period leading up to the Asian Games in China. Winning the Asian Games will clinch the team a direct berth in next year's Olympic Games, but more importantly, it will boost the team's confidence leading up to the mega event in Paris.

So, the next few months will involve rigorous training, sporadic periods of rest, testing test matches, fixing combinations and more strenuous training -- all as per a plan devised to ensure that the players are at their best physically and mentally at the time of the Asian Games.

The team will take the first step on this journey leading up to the Asian Games, to be held from September 23 to October 8, with a three-week tour of Europe during which it will play bilateral matches in Germany against China and the host nation and a four-nation international tournament in Spain in which Great Britain and South Africa besides the hosts will be the other teams.

The team has gone through a strenuous camp in Bengaluru to prepare for the Spain and Germany tour and both coach Janneke Schopman and captain Savita Punia feel the players are ready for the challenging period ahead.

For the upcoming tour of Germany and Spain, Schopman has picked some junior players to work out some new combinations ahead of Hangzhou Asian Games. On the German leg of the tour, to be played from July 16 to 19, India will take on China in the first match and then meet the hosts in two matches. In Spain, India will participate in a four-nation hockey tournament from July 25 to 30 in Terrassa to mark the 100th Anniversary of the Spanish Hockey Federation.

On this tour, the focus will be on young midfielder Jyoti Chhatri, who was part of the Junior World Cup team and is hoping to cement a permanent spot in the playing XI. Schopman said Jyoti Chhatri will make her senior national debut on this tour but clarified that there is no guarantee that players that are part of the Spain and Germany tour will be there in the Asian Games.

"Yeah for me it's also an opportunity to maybe try something new. Jyoti, certainly, is very talented and to see, you know, what would she bring to the senior team at that highest level? At the same time of course we have very good players who can always jump in. So that's what I also told the team that it is not necessarily the case that the people that go now on the tour will make it to the Asian Games or that someone that didn't make it for this tour is not going to the Asian Games. So yeah I think I'll use it as another development opportunity to see where we are and what we need to do to be at our best and  
in the Asian Games," Schopman told the media in an online interaction on Tuesday.

The Indian women's team chief coach was happy with the team's progress so far and said it has become stronger in recent times.

"The girls are doing really well and we have had a good tour in Australia and then, of course, I was with the junior team to Japan for the Junior Asia Cup and was able to see some of the players in action there close by. I just think our core group is getting stronger and stronger and I think that's great because that means the level of training is higher and that means that everyone has to perform and I also know from some of the athletes what they will bring to the team," she added.

The tour of Germany and Spain is also an opportunity to work on some of the areas that the coaching staff has identified, said skipper Savita, though she refused to list those areas as weaknesses of the team.

"Definitely, this tour will help us prepare for the Asian Games. We usually don't like to call them weaknesses but there are surely some areas on which we will be focusing on them, We did the same during the matches against Australia and will do the same in Germany and Spain. We will be playing some strong teams during this tour and after that too, we will have more than a month to iron out the areas of concern," Savita said, adding that the team tries to make the most of each training session and will try to do the same in the matches too.

Schopman said the players have gained some insight into their own play during the tour of Australia and will be doing the same in the upcoming tour.

"In Australia, we learned that the team needs a bit of time to settle. We haven't played for a while and it kind of hurt us. I think and I think overall after that we were able to play at a quite high level but not consistent enough and I think we were not rewarding ourselves enough in terms of creating outcomes so a big thing for us is to get to the same level of defense that we were able to do at the end of the Australia tour where everything we defended really well as a team we were able to delay and keep Australia far from our circle but at the same time we created enough twenty-five circle entries and even penalty corners and in this camp, we're really focusing on how can we get more goals, How come we get more shots on goal and can we have more variety in our penalty corner and that is really something I'm looking to see," she said.