Took every mistake with positive mindset to improve, says Women's Junior Asia Cup winner Mumtaz

Coach Janneke Schopman also spoke about the team's quality.

The Indian women's junior team emerged victorious after defeating four-time champions Korea 2-1 in the final of the Women's Junior Asia Cup 2023. The young colts remained undefeated throughout the tournament en route to lifting their maiden title and in the process also qualified for the FIH Junior Women's World Cup scheduled for later this year.

After a successful campaign, head coach Janneke Schopman along with Mumtaz and Preeti attended a virtual press conference and shared their thoughts on the recent performance.

Thoughts on the performance

The head coach was with the senior women's team for the Australian tour and soon joined the juniors for the Women's Junior Asia Cup in Japan. The head coach iterated, "Being in Australia was a really good experience with the senior team with both ups and downs but we concluded the tour well. Then I had to shift to Japan and do some adjustments with the junior team. We had to get used to the food, hotel, etc in the first week.

"Before the tournament, we got an opportunity to play two practise games with China and Japan. The practise games helped us understand where we had to improve and the team was ready to learn from the mistakes. Overall it was a hectic tour for me personally but it was tiring and rewarding."

Asian Games selection

The 33-member probable squad was selected recently for the Asian Games. The final squad is set to be announced tentatively on July 15th.

"We make the selection for bigger tournaments like Asia Cup quite early (July 15th). We have a core group who have been with us for more than a year and, of course, we have to see how they perform now as well. We have selection trials this month and players need to be fit with selectors watching around.

"In Australia, we tried different things and in the Junior Women's Asia Cup, we had five senior members in the squad. So both the Australia tour and Women's Junior Asia Cup have helped me assess the players and have made my task more difficult. But at present the core group is strong with each player bringing in their unique quality," she added.

Overall assessment of forwards in Japan

Janneke Schopman said, "I was impressed with everyone in the squad. We scored a lot of goals which is not always easy. One thing which stood out for us was, we played with a principle and looked at how the opposition team's defence is. The girls were successful in executing the game plan and played unselfish hockey throughout but the strikers can be selfish at times (my opinion). The ability to read what the opposition is doing and how we can manipulate it helped us."

Performance in the final against Korea

"Korea is a good team and we played them in the league stage before. They dominated and overplayed us in the first half. After the initial struggles, we came back and made use of our own abilities which made the difference in the final. We also tried to play with certain variations during the PCs and the girls adapted to it quickly as we did not have much practise on it."

Lead up to Junior World Cup

Mumtaz was an integral part of the Junior team and has played alongside the senior side previously. She was also part of the Junior World Cup last year and was carry good experience at the Asia Cup.

Mumtaz quipped, "We played well as a team in the previous Junior World Cup but couldn't medal. But we learnt a lot from that tournament on how to play in the final phases of the match, ball controlling, etc. At the Women's Junior Asia Cup, we understood the importance of each second and Janneke was equally supportive.

"We make mistakes in every match but have converted them into positives which have helped improve our game. Also if Janneke wasn't there with the team then we wouldn't have medaled at the Women's Junior Asia Cup and I am sure the entire squad would be agreeing on this."

Upcoming tournaments

"The Juniors have struggled to get international exposure which has also resulted in many not playing any international match before going into the tournament. We have 40 players in the NCOE (SAI Bangalore) and the credit goes to them as well. It would be helpful if they all can go for an exposure tour every year. The girls learnt a lot in the Asia Cup and by playing international matches they get to learn rather than only training (practise games)."

"There is a five-nation tournament in Germany along with the men's junior team. The junior team will play a few practise games against Belgium before the tournament which will help our girls. The exposure tour for the junior team will help them evolve and perform better", Janneke concluded.