People underestimate our captain: Women's hockey coach Hawgood

NEW DELHI:

Hockey India

on Tuesday announced the squads for the Indian men and women's hockey team for the upcoming

Rio Games

.

Sushila Chanu

, who played 112 international matches, was named the skipper while

Deepika Thakur

will assist her as the vice captain. The move has come a few days after skipper

Ritu Rani

was dropped from the team and asked to leave the camp on poor form and attitude issues.

Women's chief coach

Neil Hawgood

speaks to TOI on the sidelines on the announcement of the 16-member squad here. Edited excerpts:

How difficult was it for you not to go by reputation? You excluded Ritu Rani from the team..
No comment. I'm here to talk about the team and not individuals. You have to admire what this group does. You have to play it out. All I'm saying is that I'm interested in questions about this group. This group is what is going to carry India.

Do you think such decisions could have an impact on the group?
No, I think they are mentally tough enough to deal with anything. The biggest thing that is going to happen to them this year is walking out as a team for the Olympics for the first time in their lives. I think that is going to be the biggest issue that our group has to face because no one knows what that is like. The only one who does know about it is our assistant coach, who has been there six times, and me, twice. Between us, that's eight. There's no one in the coaching staff that can replicate that, and actually you can't replicate it. I think that's going to be the biggest issue. Day 1, walking into the stadium, here you are.. Wow!

Your issue since the beginning has been that the team hasn't got enough match practice...
No, I think what happened was that after they qualified, they went into a bit of a hibernation. What we need to do is balance internals out a little bit. We got all the international games that we wanted, but we got them over a very short period. the results that everyone is basing their opinions on is that we had to push them over six months and it meant that we were going on tours fatigued. Only we know that and only we can look at all the information. We are pretty happy with the last tour when we rested a lot of them.

You're going to choose a new captain for Rio. How will that impact the team in terms of balance?
It's not a new captain. Sushila captained the team on the Australian tour, she captained the junior World Cup team. That was the most successful team in a long long time for this country in winning a medal. We have got experience and I think people underestimate our captain. Our captain is someone who leads by example, does everything. I think Sushila with doing her ACL, showed how committed she was to rehabbing an injury that would otherwise rule people out of an Olympics. She is going to an Olympics without an ACL. That's unheard of and that's how determined that person is. Our whole group is determined. Our captain just tosses the coin, points to the side and off we go.

What would be a good result in the Olympics?
A good result is quarterfinals and then you never know what will happen. That's quietly what we want to do. If we perform to our best every day, we give ourselves a chance. That's all we can hope to do. If our best isn't good enough, that's it and it just shows where we actually are. It also shows that there are so many other factors out there. I have to say that going to an Olympic Games will in itself be an experience. Out in the middle of the field with thousands of people yelling and so many millions watching, we don't know if that affects the players, but that's where we come in and what we have to deal with.