Beaming faces: The junior girls’s gamers, who made India proud by profitable the Asia Cup, had been felicitated at SAI, Bengaluru, on Tuesday.
| Picture Credit score: SHAILENDRA BHOJAK
The Indian junior girls’s hockey staff’s maiden Asia Cup triumph has given hopes of an improved efficiency on the Junior World Cup later this yr, however the women may need to attend some time earlier than making the transition to the senior aspect.
With the Asian Video games simply over three months away, coach Janneke Schopman is evident that there gained’t be a lot adjustments within the senior core group. “I’m fairly proud of the efficiency of the gamers within the Junior Asia Cup and for me, it was at all times about utilizing the match and the Australia tour for the seniors to have extra gamers within the camp.
“However I feel our senior core group is kind of aggressive in the mean time and folks know they’ve to show up day-after-day to have an opportunity of being chosen,” Janneke mentioned throughout an interplay on Tuesday.
Powerful alternative
With the squad to be finalised by mid-July, Janneke admitted it was powerful to pick the absolute best gamers however added that it was not simply concerning the choice trials. “We now have been monitoring gamers from final yr.
“In fact it issues how gamers do right now and if they’re match and so they have to be good as a result of the selectors will probably be there later this month, however as workers we additionally realize it’s not simply that one choice trial. The following couple of weeks will probably be about making the items of the puzzle match,” she added.
Mumtaz Khan, who scored six targets within the match, defined how the staff had learnt from its errors throughout the earlier Junior World Cup, the place India completed fourth. “We learnt management within the dying minutes. We used to get flustered earlier however in Japan we knew the worth of each second. We now have learnt from our errors and moved ahead, one step at a time,” she mentioned.
The junior staff will subsequent journey to Germany for a 5-nation occasion, together with Belgium and Netherlands, and play apply matches with Belgium forward of the JWC, to be held in Santiago, Chile, in December.