Indoor hockey camp starts
34 out of the 37 players called up took part in the first day of training for the upcoming Indoor Hockey Asia Cup, at the Maulana Bhasani National Stadium in Dhaka yesterday.
The training on the first day was confined to within warm-ups and fitness drills and it will likely remain so for the next three days before a 12-day break for the Eid vacation.
As indoor hockey is hard to be simulated on astroturf, the training camp will shift to BKSP indoor facilities on June 9 while the team will have two weeks of training in Thailand ahead of the tournament, which will be held from July 15 to July 21, informed Bangladesh Hockey Federation’s (BHF) senior vice-president Abdur Rashid Shikder.
“We visited BKSP indoor facilities today. I won’t say I’m totally satisfied with the facilities, but I hope we it will be workable when we move the camp there on June 9,” Shikder told reporters yesterday.
Indoor hockey is a new concept to Bangladeshi hockey players. Although the indoor version of this sport has held World Cups and Asian Cups, many of the established teams do not participate in this miniature version of the game.
Bangladesh will be making their first appearance at the Indoor Asia Cup where they will be pitted against seven-time champions Iran along with Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines in Pool A. Pool B will feature Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Chinese Taipei, Singapore, Myanmar and Nepal.
Since Bangladesh have no prior experience in indoor hockey, they will need time to acclimatise with the format, which is held on a different surface and played with different balls and sticks under rules different from field hockey.
“The team will go to Thailand in the beginning of July to get more accustomed to the format before the tournament,” Shikder said.
The BHF’s senior vice-president also informed that they have already appointed a Polish coach, who will be available to come to Bangladesh after May 28.
In the meanwhile, two local coaches will conduct training sessions. One of them, former national team player Ashikuzzaman, said that having experience in this format would help players in field hockey too.
“A lot of things are different in indoor hockey from field hockey. But if someone plays indoor hockey, he can improve individual skills a lot which would help his in field hockey. The idea of indoor hockey is to improve the technical aspects of players,” Ashikuzzaman said.
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