As younger Deepika walked as much as take the penalty stroke towards Italy with India sitting on a slender one-goal lead, Janneke Schopman’s thoughts swung again to their pre-game chat. The coach and captain Savita Punia each reckoned that if the state of affairs arose for Deepika to take a stroke, she ought to go to the goalkeeper’s hand aspect. Neither knew that within the staff’s coaching session within the morning, goalkeeper Bichu Devi Kharibam had saved all of Deepika’s strokes on that aspect.
Deepika understands that not each match will see her return with a bagful of objectives(PTI)
Her ideas swirling amid the sonorous anticipatory roar of the gang, Deepika nervously stepped up and struck previous Italian goalkeeper Lucia Caruso. Through the identical hand aspect.
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“That was an enormous, large second for the teenager,” Schopman stated.
“It was an important goal for me and the team, because we only had a one-goal lead then and they could have scored any time,” Deepika said. “I felt the pressure, the crowd was loud. But I had confidence in me.”
The teenager carried that confidence into Thursday’s semi-final, stepping up as India’s main dragflicker and slotting in India’s opening aim as they took mighty Germany to the shootouts (2-2 regulation time), which the hosts misplaced but remained alive for a Paris Olympics berth.
Plucked out of the junior setup by Schopman final 12 months, the woman from Hisar who grew up wrestling instantly discovered herself flicking because the senior staff’s main dragflicker. It’s a place left vacant as a consequence of Gurjit Kaur’s exclusion and the paucity of gamers with that ability in Indian girls’s hockey.
Part of the 2021 girls’s Junior World Cup aspect, the ahead pumped in seven objectives — 4 of them from penalty corners (PC) — in India’s victorious Junior Asia Cup marketing campaign final 12 months. Drafted into the Asian Games squad, Deepika completed as India’s joint-second highest scorer (5 objectives) in Hangzhou. In the FIH Women’s Hockey Olympic Qualifiers matches in Ranchi, objectives considerably dried up for Deepika who, earlier than the Germany sport, couldn’t convert a PC right here within the probabilities she had (on some events, she hasn’t been on the sphere when India have earned PCs or the ball has been mistrapped).
Deepika thus couldn’t cease smiling after that Italy aim. The ahead understands that not each match will see her return with a bagful of objectives, and that the technical ability of dragflicking is figure in progress.
“Dragflicking is very challenging, because most times there is pressure on the team to convert a PC and score. Mentally, that can get tough. But the team gives me confidence, and as a young player that settles my nerves,” Deepika stated.
“The last couple of years I’ve learned a lot, especially after Jan (Janneke) picked me and brought me into the senior setup.”
Deepika’s rise as a dragflicker goes again to her seeds of wrestling. Growing up in Haryana’s wrestling hub of Hisar in a household of wrestlers — her grandfather and granduncle had been each wrestlers — Deepika would accompany her elder brothers to the akhadas (mud pits). She picked up the game however didn’t take pleasure in it.
Switch from wrestling to hockey
En path to her akhada sooner or later, Deepika chanced upon some ladies working towards on a hockey floor. “I instantly got attracted to it,” she stated.
Going towards her household’s wrestling custom and needs, Deepika switched to hockey in 2012. “My family tried a lot to push me into wrestling. But I loved hockey, I wanted to pursue it and then slowly my family also supported me,” she said. “Once I started playing tournaments and coaches kept telling me about the road ahead, I quietly kept thinking that I want to be there.”
The dabble into dragflicking got here in 2017. Aware of the shortage of too many choices of high quality dragflickers on the senior stage, her coach in Hisar, Ejas Malik, requested her to start out doing it. “He informed me, ‘You are well-built, you have the wrestling roots, you have the power’. He thought dragflicking will be helpful for my career with the Indian team,” Deepika said.
Schopman then spotted her flicking ways in the junior group and fast-tracked her into the top level. Goals or not, the former Dutch player realises the value of Deepika in the team as one of the rare genuine dragflickers (Udita, who converted two PCs against Italy, has a slap).
“She’s a very good dragflicker, and I’m quite pleased with her performances in the PCs in the last few tournaments,” Schopman said. “She’s young, but her dragflicking threat is something that even coaches in Spain and from other teams that are not here say — that you have a good dragflicker. So, it’s not like the other teams think that we don’t have a threat. They are very aware that we do.”
Deepika herself is aware that she will have to keep polishing her dragflicking skills. Still quite raw and young, the 20-year-old is eager to keep doing that and play her part in filling the dragflicking hole in the Indian women’s staff.
“I have a dream of going to the Olympics,” Deepika said. “But I also hope to get India to a higher level in women’s hockey. And to keep improving myself as a dragflicker.”
Source: www.hindustantimes.com
