Indian men’s team coach Graham Reid has said that mental toughness will play the biggest role in order to beat strong opponents in the upcoming Olympics 2021.
Both Indian men’s and women’s team are performing really well across all tournaments from past few years. It will be a bigger responsibility on them to replicate the same performance at the mega sporting event which is scheduled for the next year in 2021.
The women’s team will play their first match against world number one Netherlands, while the men’s side will take on New Zealand on 24th July 2021 in their first game at Tokyo.
“The Olympic Games is the toughest competition in the sporting world and therefore a player’s mentality has to match it. The biggest challenge as a player is to remain focused on the job at hand. The first game brings with it a number of emotions. The player who can control those emotions and stick to the game plan will be ahead,” Reid said in a statement.
Reid also stressed on preparing the team for the uncertain situation where you need to sock pressure well and concentrate on your tactics to beat stronger teams on the match day.
“The biggest challenge for us during these next 12 months will be uncertainty. There are a lot of things that are going to happen that we can’t control. We must only worry about the things we can control,” he said.
“We can control how hard we work, how well we train and our fitness levels. Mental toughness will definitely be a factor during this next period and the Indian players have an innate ability to deal with difficult circumstances. It is my intention to develop the players understanding of their mental strength and build their ability to access and trust it when required,” he added.
However Indian women’s team coach Sjoerd Marijne said “”We live in challenging times where we need to have a ‘step by step’ approach. For now, we wait to return to the national camp and begin training. Once we know when we can resume our preparations for the Olympic Games, we will be able to make further plans on how to get competition-ready.”
“I am someone who believes in creating positive opportunities and an extra year gives us the opportunity to grow further as a team. Our first focus will be to start training as soon as possible and then play international matches as soon as feasible,” he concluded.
The Tokyo Olympics was originally scheduled for 2020 but due to growing uncertainty due to COVID-19 it has been postponed to next year 2021 as the mega event will start from July 23rd to August 8th 2021 , while the Paralympics will take place from August 24 to September 5, 2021.
