THE best brain to pick in order to know a thing or two about the Indian team that’s competing at the junior World Cup in Bhubaneswar is Jude Felix. He was in charge of the junior programme when 55 of the best boys walked through the Sports Authority of India’s gate in Bengaluru in 2017.
“They were raw back then,” Felix remembers. The first international tournament for the Class of 2017 was the invitational Sultan of Johor Cup in October. India finished third and the management had their first proper look at the likes of Sanjay, Rabichandra Singh Moirangthem, Maninder Singh and Dilpreet Singh (he has since played at the Olympics). The team was skippered by Vivek Sagar Prasad.
Over the next 18 months, Felix, using what he calls ‘an holistic approach to training’, sharpened the bunch so much that by the middle of 2019, ‘they were ready to play the World Cup’.
The profile pages of the junior players in the Hockey India website make for interesting reading. Five of the 20 players (including the two alternates) at the World Cup have the same ‘sporting role model’. Cristiano Ronaldo. “Ronaldo because I think he is limitless,” notes Sanjay, the team’s vice-captain, on his page. The admiration for Ronaldo inside India’s dressing room meant there was a beeline for wearing the No 7 shirt at this tournament but Sanjay beat the competition as he called dibs on it. He admitted as much after Thursday’s match against Canada.
This story is from the November 27, 2021 edition of The New Indian Express Chennai.
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This story is from the November 27, 2021 edition of The New Indian Express Chennai.
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