Juniors primed to push seniors for places

Following a long layoff due to the coronavirus pandemic, some senior players of the national hockey team are likely to face a stiff challenge from junior players to retain their places in the squad for the Men's Asian Champions Trophy to be held in Dhaka next March.

The national hockey team were supposed to start their preparations in early December but the training has been pushed to January due to the arrangement of the Victory Day Hockey tournament, scheduled to be held from December 21-27 with the participation of six teams.

The tournament will no doubt give an edge to the junior players who have just played the President's Cup on the back of a six-week training camp for the Bangabandhu Junior (U-21) Asian Cup, which was also pushed back to July from its scheduled February start date amid the second wave of the pandemic.

National team head coach Mahabub Harun will have just nine weeks to prepare his charges before facing strong opponents like India, Pakistan, Korea, Japan and Malaysia and he wants to pick the players after watching their performance in the upcoming Victory Day tournament.

"We haven't started national training yet but the players have been training under various services teams, from where most players come to form the national side," Mahabub told The Daily Star. "The players have been out of action for a long period due to the pandemic, so I don't know how their condition is at the moment. But I can get a clear picture after watching the performance in the Victory Day tournament and plan the drills for each individual accordingly in the national camp, which is likely to start in early January."

The former national player is thinking of calling up 30 to 32 players, with 18 players in the Asian Games squad getting automatic call-ups. The rest of the players are likely to come from the national U-21 squad as he sees little possibility of being impressed by players outside these two groups because of the long pandemic-induced gap as well as the fact that there has been no hockey league for more than two years.

National U-21 hockey team's head coach Mamunur Rashid however believes junior players will be ahead of seniors in terms of physical fitness as the juniors trained under him for 47 days and played the President's Cup.

"I think the junior players have already regained 50 to 60 percent fitness through training and playing the President's Cup. They will get sharper in upcoming tournaments and in national training if they get call-ups.

"I can tell you that senior players may face tough challenges in some positions from junior players like forward Mahabub Hossain, who was the top scorer in the last two tournaments [President's Cup and the Shaheed Smriti tournament], midfielders Al Nahian Shuvo, Shamanto Lal Prince and Abed Uddin, defenders Mehdi Hasan and Shawon, who have all been playing really well," said Mamunur, who also believes his U-21 team can put up a good fight in the Junior Asia Cup if they get the chance to play the six matches of Champions Trophy for the senior team.