Final results of today’s Hockey are determined heavily by conversion of penalty corners. Floris Jan Bovelander and Sohail Abbas added new dimension in the art of scoring form PC. It was drag flick. No doubt, in HIL 2014, each team was armed by at least 1 PC specialist. Ashley Jackson and Gonzalo Peillat were part of RR and KL. 4 Indians in the same department were also in the fray for other clubs.
Raghunath was purchased by UPW as the specialist drag flicker. He was given additional responsibility of the captaincy of the team. It probably shriveled his strength. Rupinder Pal Singh was the star of Delhi Waveriders. He finished the tournament with 6 goals, one fewer than his tally of the previous edition. Rupinder was everywhere in the match and provided crucial passes form all positions. Conversion rate of both of them was around 30% which is a bit low by International standards.
Gurjinder Singh was the choice of Mumbai Magicians. Despite of having Sandeep Singh in the squad (the top scorer of previous edition) MM was condemned to finish last in 2013. The team gambled and replaced Sandeep with Gurjinder Singh. Gurjinder is only 19 years of age. In Junior Hockey World Cup in Delhi, he was among few players who made a niche for themselves. Probably due to it, MM recruited him for tough assignment. His choice proved a big mistake. Highly acclaimed Gurjinder could net only 2 goals. The disaster cost team heavily and it again failed to reach knock out stage.
But one man stood taller than others. He is Sandeep Singh. For Jaypee Punjab Warriors, he scored 11 goals and took the title of top scorer of the tournament for second year in a row. He was shown the door from national team due to his bad habit of making some petty errors in defending. As a result, he was labeled as a man who concedes more goals than scoring. In this edition, he emerged in a new ‘Avataar’. He retained his strength of PC conversion and improved his deficiencies in defence. In the tournament, his success rate was 40% which is as per International statistics.
Sandeep hit headlines when he scored 2 goals in match against Pakistan in WC-2010 at Delhi. India, on the evening of festival Holi, went on to win against arch rivals by the margin of 4-1. He scored hat trick against France at the same venue in final of Olympic qualifier which gave India the ticket to London. It ended India’s 8 long years wait in the Olympics.
Before the purchase for JPW, journalist asked Barry Dancer (coach of JPW) about the selection of Sandeep Singh. They were apprehensive about him. Barry made it clear that he wants to see more goals in JPW’s account in each match. Indeed, the team scored 40 goals in HIL. These are 10 more than any other team.
Conversion on penalty corner is getting tougher. Hi tech video cameras, ultra slow motion videos, replays are studying each drag flicker. Analysts are analyzing favourite- strongest- weakest areas of each drag flickers. That is why each club purchased a specialist drag flicker and a quality Goal keeper in the squad for success. No doubt, performance of these 2 affected the result to great degree. In World Hockey in a competitive game, a GK make about 10 saves per game. Teams are practicing really hard to stop the bullets, coming at about 100kmph. Coaches and technical staff in HIL were equipped with all the facilities to arrest the storm.
In this scenario, success of Sandeep carries extra weight. He did his homework superbly. Against taller GKs, he chose low grounder shots. For shorter ones, he used his favourite area, top left corner. 5 times FIH player of the year Jamie Dwyer praised him openly. He went on to add that he has matured leaps and bound in a year. Sandeep is 27 and has experience of Olympic. Now, Terry Walsh cannot ignore him. Best of luck Sandeep for ‘The Second Coming.’