As Indian women's hockey team gears up to play the FIH Olympic qualifier against the US, skipper Rani Rampal on Saturday said the team is ready for the game and they have done preparations to come out with all guns blazing.
"Our team is prepared. We have been training for a long time now for the match against the US in the FIH Olympic qualifiers. We have trained for penalty corners. We know we can score goals at the last minute. Penalty corners are utilised by everyone to register goals. In the last two and a half years, we have worked hard on the physical aspect of the game," Rani told ANI.
She also added that the team gets a huge amount of support here at the Kalinga Stadium in Odisha.
"We get huge crowd support here in Odisha. Our focus is on training hard and getting the right result," she said.
The women's team coach Sjoerd Marijne said penalty corners are an important aspect of the game and he is consciously working to improve the overall ability of the team.
"We are ready. It is bad that we have to wait for one week to get the match underway. But we are fully prepared for the match against the USA. I do not have one focus. I have many areas that have my eye. Penalty corners are an important aspect, but it is not like that we only need to focus on that. We work on these types of things for the whole year. We have improved a lot since 2017," Marijne said.
The winners of the FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers will qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
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The winners will be determined as follows: Teams will be ranked according to the number of points each has accumulated in both matches (for each match, 3 points are awarded to the winner, one point to each team in the event of a draw and no point to the loser).
If there is equality among the two teams, then the teams will be ranked according to their respective goal difference. If equality remains, a shoot-out competition will be played to establish the winner.
India will take on the USA on November 1 and 2 at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar.