No More ‘Didi’ on Field, Women’s Hockey Team Set for Asian Games

Video Editor: Sandeep Suman

The 18-member Indian women’s hockey are set to begin their campaign again hosts Indonesia in their opening Pool B match on 19 August. And while India haven’t brought home a gold from the quadrennial event in 36 years, Rani Rampal and her team are confident of their prep for this edition, and have their eyes set on the Olympic qualification.

Asian Games is the biggest tournament of the year for us because if we win gold, we will get direct qualification for the 2020 Olympics.

Rani Rampal

“Don’t know about earlier years. Last time we had a good chance and we lost the semi-final very closely. But maybe this year we’ll make up for it,” said goalkeeper Savita. Rani added, “Asian Games matches are close but we somehow lose out on the final touch. I have complete belief that this year we’ll be able to do it”.

“Our team will only bring a gold this year.”

Navneet Kaur

For more latest news and updates from the 2018 Asian Games, click here.

The women’s team will face Korea, Thailand, Kazakhstan and Indonesia in Pool B and will have to finish in the top two in the Pool Stage to make the semi-final of the Asian Games.

On the insistence of their former coach and current Indian men’s hockey team coach Harendra Singh, the women’s team have stopped calling the seniors players of the team ‘didi’. Midfielder Monika said, “Yeah it does get confusing. When we call them didi you don’t know which one you’re talking about.”

The women will be going participating in the games, starting 18 August in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta and Palembang, as the top-ranked Asian team in the world. This, after the team recently achieved their best-ever world ranking as they climbed up a spot to the ninth place in the latest FIH Hero World Rankings.

The players credited fitness level, confidence, adopting the European style of hockey and a more structured game as the reason for the climb.