How India women are borrowing a football principle to hassle rivals

The calm waters of Kannur was an unlikely place to launch the road to Los Angeles. But last July, when the Indian men’s hockey team were preparing to open their Paris Olympics campaign — which ended with a second-successive bronze medal — the women found themselves in Kerala’s coastal town. Still reeling from the Olympic qualifier debacle, the players did not know what they were doing there. And as coach Harendra Singh admits, ‘they perhaps did not even want to be there’.”There was a lot of resilience and scepticism. They wondered, ‘what are we even doing here?’” Harendra says. Within a few hours of landing there, they discovered it wasn’t a pleasure tour. The country’s best players spent almost a week at the Indian Naval Academy doing things they never imagined. “They had to run while carrying giant barrels on their backs, spend sleepless nights in the jungle, live in a tent while it was raining hard, mosquitoes all over… The idea was in minimum facilities, they had to show the determination to do well,” Harendra says.
The week-long camp was to set the base — fitness and mentality-wise — for a profound change Harendra wanted to see in the way the team played. During the European leg of the FIH Pro League in May last year, he had noticed that India’s players were oftentimes too slow to react when they lost possession in a match. This belief got firm when he saw the players during the Asian Champions Trophy in September.
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Six-second rule
”We won that tournament in Rajgir but as the team’s coach, I was not happy. It made me realise we had a lot of ground still left to cover,” Harendra admits. Especially when India lost the ball in the middle of the field, or in the opponent’s half.
India’s turnover rate remains high because the players are ‘too eager to go vertical each time rather than passing horizontally, playing cool and making the opponent chase you’. trying to force their way into the opponent’s ‘D’, the possession is cheaply surrendered.
The midfielders and the forwards were too slow to win back the ball, handing over the advantage to their opponents. “I looked at the play and thought, ‘Why is the opponent having more than six seconds (on the ball)?’ I want to have the privilege to have the ball within six seconds from the opponents. So, we began work on that,” Harendra says.
The six-second rule has been deployed football coaches for more than a decade. Harendra, who has often looked at football for tactical inspiration during his two-decade-long career as hockey coach, wanted his players to increase their work rate in getting the ball back whenever they lose it.Story continues below this ad
It starts with the forwards as the first line of defence. The idea is to close down the opponent the moment when a player loses the ball, giving them little time to settle and regain possession. If the ball isn’t recovered within six seconds, then the players retreat and defend their spaces to stop a counter-attack.
As much as fitness, it requires a strong mentality to implement this style. “When you lose the ball, you instantly feel bad about it,” says former India captain Savita Punia. “But the game nowadays has become so fast that you can’t even pause for a millisecond to think about your make. So, from a player’s point of view, rather than thinking about the make, it is important to stay in the moment and regain possession within six seconds so you don’t cede the advantage. Mentally, physically you have to be very fit.”
At all times, this demands that the players remain ‘switched on’. And to gauge how tough that is — for a team that is still in progress — one just needs to look at the two matches against Germany in the Pro League.
On Friday, every time India’s midfielders and forwards lost the ball, they barely reacted. “For instance, in the third quarter, we were all over Germany but every time we made a small make, we went into our shell,” Harendra says. They ‘showed too much respect’ to Germany and gave them the time, space to get comfortable on the ball. India lost that match 0-4. Harendra insed after that match that India were fitter than Germany but didn’t show the hunger to win.Story continues below this ad
Twenty-four hours later, the two teams faced off again. This time, India won the midfield battles, the second balls and efficiently closed down the Germans each time they had the ball. The match ended with a clean sheet and India’s first regulation-time win over the 2022 World Cup semifinals in a decade.
It’s crucial for India to not read too much into the win, for Germany are here with an experimental squad under a new coach. The challenge will be to make this a habit and repeat the performance in a high-stakes environment. But as Harendra says, “…at least it’s a reassurance that we haven’t deviated from the path taken during the trip to Kannur.”