Bengaluru, March 1 Hockey India on Monday named a 32-member core probable group for the men's national camp which begins at the Sports Authority of India (SAI), Bengaluru on March 2. The players will report to Chief Coach Graham Reid for the four-week National Coaching Camp ahead of the team's tour to Germany and England for the FIH Hockey Pro League.
Reid said the camp will lay a good foundation ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games with focus on areas the team lacked in their campaign so far in the FIH Hockey Pro League where they have won three matches, lost two and tied one and won the subsequent penalty shootout to gain a bonus point.
"One of the takeaways from the matches we played at the FIH Hockey Pro League was that we have proven to ourselves that we can produce good results against the best teams in the world. It's a step forward in building self-belief. Also it shows that the things we have been focusing on is working. But we still need to be more consistent not only across matches but also across all quarters," said Graham recalling the team's performance in the matches against world's top 3 teams in the FIH Hockey Pro League.
"The four-week camp will bring focus back on our skill tackling, goal shooting, trapping. We also need to work on our attacking abilities, especially to move the ball from attacking 25 into the circle. After this camp, we will go to Germany and England to play against teams there which we help us further assess improvements required as we work toward 2020 Olympic Games," stated Graham.
Players list: P.R. Sreejesh, Krishan Bahadur Pathak, Suraj Karkera, Harmanpreet Singh, Dilpreet Singh, Surender Kumar, Birendra Lakra, Rupinder Pal Singh, Gurinder Singh, Amit Rohidas, Kothajit Singh Khadangbam, Manpreet Singh, Hardik Singh, Nilakanta Sharma, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Simranjeet Singh, Akashdeep Singh, Ramandeep Singh, S V Sunil, Mandeep Singh, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, Gursahibjit Singh, Shamsher Singh, Varun Kumar, Jarmanpreet Singh, Dipsan Tirkey, Nilam Sanjeep Xess, Jaskaran Singh, Rajkumar Pal, Gurjant Singh, Sumit, Chinglensana Singh.
( With inputs from IANS )