We will get world-class players through grassroots: HI President Dilip Tirkey

With all the noise around Hockey World Cup settling down now, it looks like Hockey India is back with the promises made earlier during the election of President Dilip Tirkey.

Hockey India launched a new Grassroots Development Program which is designed to unearth young talent and improve the bench strength of the National Senior and Junior teams for men and women.

Talking about the launch of the program, Hockey India President Dilip Tirkey said, "I am very happy that our program is getting launched after hard work from the team at Hockey India. We will get world-class players from programs like these."

Grassroots development was one of the ideas echoed by the fans and stakeholders alike given the thin supply chain of Indian hockey.

"I had this idea in my mind before I became the president. It is really important to be aware of the quality and level of grassroots level. Any country succeeding at the world level has a robust grassroots system. With the launch of this program, the junior players will be directly under our observation," Dilip explained the thought process behind the launch of the program.

The evolution of Hockey has been tremendous and world hockey has witnessed a huge increase in the skillset-specific players. One of the recent examples is the usage of a penalty shootout specialist goalkeeper by Germany in the 2023 Men's Hockey World Cup finals against Belgium.

Jean-Paul Danneberg was brought on the field in the last minute to save penalties in the shoot-out and he effectively saved two of them to win the World title.

Stressing on the development of such skills among the young players, Dilip Tirkey said, "We will focus majorly on the goalkeeping and drag flicking skills. We will select around 8-10 centers across the country where kids at the age of 16 will be trained in these skills. We are starting from two centers- Rourkela and Jamshedpur. "

"Drag-flicking coaches and goalkeeping coaches will be available in these centers to train the selected kids in specific skills. We are in touch with our legends and ex-players such as Rupinder Pal Singh, VR Raghunath, and many others. All these people will help us with inputs and their experience to implement these training programs at the grassroots level," he added further in the media interaction.

The new process will follow a route of graduating players from grassroots as Hockey India is looking to U-17 and U-19 teams and sending them to foreign exposure tours. As a result, the future bench strength of the main Junior and Senior Indian teams is expected to become stronger with the U-23 teams acting as the feeder to the senior national team.

"We neglected the grassroots for very long without realizing that they are our future. The right programs are needed at the right age group to hone skills among the kids. These programs will develop specialized positions and track the progression of players from a young age enabling us to improve at the global level," Dilip Tirkey concluded.

In a country like India, execution is the biggest challenge ever given the vast landscape. It will be worth tracking how much of these plans are implemented successfully at the grassroots level.