Bengaluru: The Indian men’s hockey team is all set to play the Asian Champions Trophy in Dhaka in Dhaka, early March next year if there are no travel restrictions due to the ongoing coronavirus. After a long gap for the pandemic, Midfielder Sumit Kumar believes that this tournament will be a perfect spot to test the team’s conditions for the upcoming Olympics.
Sumit is seeing this tournament as a platform to improve the game, “We have been very fortunate to resume training and we have been provided with a bio-safe environment by SAI and Hockey India to hone our skills. The Asian Champions Trophy next year will show the level we are at and how much we will need to further improve ahead of the Olympic Games,” said the FIH Junior Men’s World Cup 2016 winner.
The on-going National Coaching Camp in SAI, Bengaluru, is making progress in the team and is headed in the right direction. “Though we won’t be competing this year due to the pandemic, the sessions are planned in such a way that we play matches against each other where we are expected to bring out our best. We have something called as red sessions which are high-intensity sessions and I can tell that we are in much better form both mentally and physical than when we started out in August after mandatory quarantine,” said Sumit coming from Sonipat.
Sumit is eager to be back in the Indian squad and compete after missing some major tournaments last year due to his wrist-injury, “I had suffered a wrist injury during the FIH Men’s Series Finals in Bhubaneswar last June. It was a long road to recovery and I was happy to have been picked for the FIH Hockey Pro League earlier this year where I got to play against top teams.
“To make the Indian Team, one has to be really good in executing what is expected of us and there is good internal competition. For now, I am giving my 100 per cent in training and I look forward to hopefully playing in the Asian Champions Trophy and defending our title next year,” he concluded.
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