PC point: Jugraj is a loss, but Indian can talk Tirkey

The injury to Jugraj Singh is, on the face of it, a big blow to the tactics of the Indian hockey team, especially given the campaign to reac...

The injury to Jugraj Singh is, on the face of it, a big blow to the tactics of the Indian hockey team, especially given the campaign to reach the 2004 Olympics in Athens. He is the only established drag-flicker and there aren’t any replacements.

That in itself is an alarming statistic:, given the role of the drag-flicker in modern hockey. Most top countries have at least two drag-flickers in the team, as do clubs in Holland and Germany.

The two options available to the IHF are Len Aiyappa, who’s excelling in the Malaysian league but did not impress at the India camp, and Sandeep Kumar, a member of the Junior India team who scored four goals against Pakistan in the final of the five-nation tournament held in Poland last month. Neither is proven at international level.

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However, the silver lining in the cloud is the presence of Dilip Tirkey — he doesn’t employ the drag-flick but hits the ball off a penalty corner. Indeed, he’s the only successful hitter in the world at present and even has a better conversion rate than Jugraj.

Ironically, the Tirkey-Jugraj combination had been shaping up well of late; India were the only team with a flicker-hitter combination and Tirkey offered variety. In theory, the flick should be more successful because, being airborne, it is tougher to stop than a hit, which rolls along the ground.

The think-tank has, in fact, been grooming another defender, Kanwalpreet Singh, to be a hitter like Tirkey. Singh was tested on the team’s German tour and he was successful on the only occasion he was asked to take the PC.

In any case, the importance of penalty corners is far less with the present Indian team than with other sides. The philosophy of coach Rajinder Singh revolves around playing ‘attacking hockey’, but not forcing the opposing defenders into errors inside the D and win the PC. Even in the recent Champions Trophy, the attack was fumbling inside the D, in front of goal.