Asian Champions Trophy: Pakistan favourites to land title, says India coach

Great players, experience put Greenshirts in pole, says Nobbs.

India’s hockey coach Michael Nobbs has termed Pakistan hockey team favourites to grab gold at the Asian Champions Trophy that starts in Doha today.

Pakistan finished third in the Champions Trophy held in Melbourne, beating India 3-2 in the bronze-medal playoff, and the Australian feels experience and the presence of ‘great players’ makes the Greenshirts the favourites.

“Pakistan is clearly the favourites for this tournament,” Nobbs told The Peninsula. “India and Pakistan are playing after coming straight from a tough tournament. But Pakistan has some great players like Shakeel Abbasi and Waseem Ahmed, between them they have around 600 games. We have Sardar Singh who has figured in 150 matches.”

India defeated Pakistan on penalty strokes to win the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy last year after the Greenshirts had topped the table after the round-robin. With the bronze in Melbourne, Pakistan also managed to jump four places in the international rankings, up to fifth, and are the highest-ranked team in the Doha event.

India stick to youngsters

The Indian selectors fielded a young team in the Champions Trophy, which followed a poor Olympics, and have decided against making wholesale changes after finishing fourth in Melbourne.



“The selectors have decided to look at young players as they are the future. It doesn’t mean that the senior players will be missing out completely. The young boys did very well in Australia. I think after the Olympics we looked at the German team. They have good standards and so we took positives from their play and put them in our style of play.
We still have our attacking style of play but we have tightened up in the defence a bit more looking at the way the Germans play.”

Nobbs added that Hockey India was trying to create a big pool of players.

“We are trying to build up the base of hockey in the country. And we have made some conscious effort to try and make sure that we have 20-30 players, or more, who we can call on anytime. We will also try and make sure all are provided opportunities before picking the best for major tournaments.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2012.