How Gurjit Kaur’s need to do one thing completely different gave Indian ladies’s hockey its first drag flicker

It’s not possible to think about a aspect rising to the highest in worldwide hockey with out a drag flicker of their ranks. It’s not possible as a result of with out a specialist, a crew won’t ever be capable of take full benefit of the penalty nook. Throw in a couple of variations and you’ve got a weapon that’s exhausting to cease. Good it and you may rise to the highest. On the worldwide stage, roughly one-third of the penalty corners lead to a purpose.

Jay Stacy (the previous report holder for many caps for the Kookaburras) is credited as being the primary to make use of the talent within the 1987 Australian Hockey Championships in Hobart. Up till that time, the hit was the popular possibility. However the clean astroturfs made it doable to tug after which flick the ball with wonderful energy and precision.

The significance of Gurjit Kaur, who helped India their attain first Asian Video games last in 20 years

Different groups have been fast to search out their very own stars. Nice Britain had Calum Giles. Holland had Floris Jan Bovelander. Pakistan had Sohail Abbas. However India relied on the hit for a very long time earlier than they lastly discovered sufficient astroturfs to offer them a Jugraj Singh in 2001.

The same pattern was noticed in ladies’s hockey as nicely. The very best groups had their penalty nook specialists. India had none. They relied on the hit and that simply doesn’t get the required outcomes. However all that modified in 2017, when Gurjit Kaur acquired a sport throughout a tour of Malaysia.

The 25-year-old defender from Punjab scored in her first match and has since then emerged as one of the crucial essential cogs of the crew. The emergence of a drag flicker opened up the sport that little bit extra for India. It additionally gave the crew a bonafide goal-scoring possibility along with skipper Rani Rampal.

Being completely different

Gurjit’s story begins in a different way too. She didn’t play sport in her early years. In her village (Miadi Kalan in Amritsar), however for the odd point out of kabaddi, sport was by no means excessive on the precedence checklist.

Her father, Satnam Singh, needed to offer her a great training however for the reason that faculty was a good distance away from the village, Gurjit alongside together with her sister was despatched to the hostel and it was there that she had her preliminary brush with sport.

“I didn’t play any sport as a child,” mentioned Gurjit in an interview to Scroll.in. “There isn’t a sporting ambiance in our village as such. A very long time again they used to play a little bit of kabaddi, so I knew a bit about that however not rather more. My faculty was fairly removed from the village, so I used to be ultimately put in a hostel. Proper subsequent to our hostel, there was a floor the place hockey was being performed. We’d preserve watching them and felt like taking part in too. We requested our mother and father for permission to play and we have been gladly given permission.”

Gurjit added: “At school, I had no data of the drag flick. I might simply try to push the ball. However my coach knew about it and he acquired me a wood hockey stick which had a slight bend. And he slowly stored feeding me data. Initially, I too would simply hit the ball however then I noticed others do it and I used to be like ‘I wish to do this too’. I didn’t wish to do what everybody was doing. I needed to strive one thing completely different. And the drag flick is so completely different that not everybody can do it.”

She was in sixth commonplace when she lastly picked up the game. Gurjit was powerfully constructed however hockey is as a lot about tempo and approach as it’s about physicality. So, she would spend hours watching her seniors play the game.

“After I was at school, I might try to drag flick however I didn’t have an excessive amount of data concerning the approach,” mentioned Gurjit. “So after I performed senior nationals, I acquired known as up for the junior camp and that’s after I actually understood the mechanics and the approach behind the drag flick. I had continued with my very own feeble efforts to determine issues out by myself however that is when it actually started for me. I might take each alternative to observe the great drag sparkles, even those within the males’s crew, and be taught from them. The footwork, the build-up and each different little factor that I might discover, I might try to incorporate into my approach as nicely.”

Stepping up for India

A number of years after making the junior camp, Gurjit was known as up for the senior camp. Her flick, like that of most kids, was nonetheless a piece in progress but it surely had turned heads.

The drag flick is an advanced approach to be taught. It requires coordination, power and timing and will take years to grasp. As well as, it is advisable to put aside time to excellent it after practising your main job of being a defender or a midfielder or an attacker. So it nearly by no means ends in a single session. That alone takes a toll.

After which there’s the extra load of mastering the variations. Gone are the times when a drag flicker might simply smash it in. With protecting tools changing into higher, the dashing defenders are that little bit quicker than they was once and with simply seconds to drag the set off, Gurjit wanted to turn into smarter too.

Nonetheless, it helped that she managed to attain early in her worldwide profession.

“My first tour was that of Malaysia in 2017 and there I had an opportunity to make use of the drag flick in worldwide hockey for the primary time. I scored in my first match itself and that gave my confidence an enormous enhance. And from that time on the need to maintain scoring with the drag flick elevated and I stored up my follow periods.”

It has been three years since her debut however Gurjit continues to deal with the fundamentals with quiet dedication. She doesn’t wish to let her team-mates down.

“That they consider in me makes me really feel blessed,” mentioned Gurjit. “That I can rating for the nation makes me really feel blessed. We’re like a household right here. We share our joys and sorrows and if something, I wish to come by way of not only for myself however for my crew too.”

For now, the Olympics have been shut out of her thoughts. Every day has a gradual rhythm to it – Gurjit standing on the prime of the D, stepping in, following by way of and dragging the ball to the specified nook of the online. Then, she goes again to teach Sjoerd Marijne and appears by way of the video; she will get his solutions and repeats the motion again and again till she feels each a part of the motion is in sync.

“There may be all the time scope to enhance and I do know I will be significantly better,” mentioned Gurjit. “We’re beginning once more from the fundamentals after this lengthy break. However I’m solely taking a look at it as an opportunity to construct from the ground-up once more. Since I do know greater than after I first began, it needs to be simpler. Then once more, who is aware of what I’d be taught this time round.”