The influence of Sardar Singh in Indian team's success this year
Captain and inspiration
With 191 Caps and 13 International Goals, captain of the Indian men’s hockey team, 28-year-old Sardar Singh, is an inspiration for many people. He led the team to one of the biggest achievements in Indian hockey, Asian Games gold.
After the 2012 London Olympics debacle, Indian men’s hockey team has improved tremendously to finish on top in the Asian Games at Incheon 2014. This historic win after a long wait of 16 years is a result of two years of hard work, planning and strategy. Singh played a very important role in the team through this comeback journey.
In 2014, from the not-so-clinical performance in the Hockey World cup in Hague, Netherlands to the silver medal in the Commonwealth Games at Glasgow and then to the gold medal in the Asian Games at Incheon, Indian men’s hockey team has excelled considerably this year under the leadership of Singh.
Gaining qualification for Rio 2016
With the aim of the 2016 Rio Olympics qualification berth in mind, team India put in a lot of effort from finishing runner’s up in the Commonwealth Games 2014 to beating Pakistan in the final to clinch the Asiad 2014 gold title. Singh, who plays in a pivotal center half position in the team, claimed that constant improvement while continuously correcting mistakes on field without losing focus and hunger to perform with dedication helped the team to perform better in each game.
From being the chief playmaker for India to donning the captain’s role, Singh is an inspiration to his teammates, especially youngsters in the team like Danish, Dharamvir, Chinglensana and Manpreet. He encourages the players to play their natural game and keep learning from their mistakes.
Also a deputy superintendent police officer with the Haryana Police, Singh gave credit to the teammates for showing improvement by putting effort in the training camps with the coach Terry Walsh for the past 7-8 months which clearly showed the positive results during the matches.
Added responsibility
Singh believes that captaincy means additional responsibility which begins off the pitch and there must be camaraderie among players which gets reflected in the on-pitch performance. This could be seen with the constantly improving team’s performance throughout this year.
The pre-tournament training camps throughout the year were aimed at areas of improvement. Some of the specific areas of improvement in the training camps were better penalty rate conversions, goal conversion of scoring chances, retackling and counterattacking.
Singh believes that more experience and games against European nations like Germany, Netherlands etc. would help to improve the game for team India even further. The responsible, hardworking yet humble and soft spoken Singh has successfully spearheaded the Indian hockey team so far this year.
But there is still a major tournament to look forward to this year, the Hockey Champions trophy. A lot would be expected out of Singh and the team after the benchmark achievement at the 2014 Asian Games.