India males’s hockey group goalkeeper Krishan Pathak. Picture: Hockey India
Choosing the brains of veteran PR Sreejesh has performed a key function in sharpening his goalkeeping abilities, says Indian males’s hockey group custodian Krishan Bahadur Pathak, who by no means hesitates to strategy his senior colleague for steering when “in doubt”.
Pathak and Sreejesh share an excellent camaraderie on the turf because the duo has been manning the goalpost of the Indian group for fairly someday now, together with the final Asian Video games in Jakarta and the Tokyo Olympics the place they received a historic bronze.
“We (me and Sreejesh) have an excellent bonding between us. He is one of the senior players in the team and whenever I am in doubt, I just go up to him and seek his advice on the matter,” mentioned Pathak, who has 103 worldwide caps below his belt.
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“His experience of playing over the last two decades surely helped me a lot.” The upcoming Hangzhou Asian Video games will likely be Pathak’s second look within the continental showpiece and his goal is easy — win the gold and qualify for subsequent 12 months’s Paris Olympics.
“It’s undoubtedly a proud second for me and my household. If I look again on my journey, I by no means imagined that I’d get the chance to earn greater than 100 worldwide caps for India and play my second Asian Video games.
“It is something I will cherish for a lifetime. We will take it match by match and will not take any team for granted. We cannot let our guard down at any given time,” the goalkeeper from Punjab mentioned.
India will open their Asian Video games marketing campaign in opposition to Uzbekistan on September 24.
Speaking in regards to the Indian group’s preparation, Pathak mentioned they’re now focussing on the fundamentals and dealing on errors which they dedicated within the final match.
Each Sreejesh and Pathak additionally had particular goalkeeping periods with Dutch skilled Dennis van de Pol forward of the Video games. “The coaching has been going effectively. All of the gamers are working laborious to arrange for the large match. We’ve had 4-5 goalkeeping periods with Dennis, and there will likely be a couple of extra within the coming days.
“We’ve gone over the basics again, focusing on the mistakes we made in previous tournaments and how to improve quick decision making, among other things. Before coming to the camp, Dennis asked us what problems we were having and how we could work together to solve them,” Pathak mentioned.
Pathak, who made his senior group debut in 2018, was additionally a member of the Indian group that not too long ago received the seventh version of the Asian Champions Trophy in Chennai.
“We have a good run of games in the lead up to the Asian Games. We played against some top sides, so that will definitely help us in identifying what are our strong and weak points,” he mentioned.
“The players will also get confidence from a good outing that they have had in the Asian Champions Trophy. We don’t want to repeat the mistakes going forward.”