Dutch fullback Paul Litjens was a penalty corner specialist. His hockey stick was of the maximum permissible weight. Those who played him in the 1970s and 1980s said that he hit the ball so hard that you couldn’t defend it — you just grounded your stick on the turf, ran towards him at full speed and left the rest to God. Litjens was the highest goal scorer of his time with a tally of 267.
The Dutchman’s record was eclipsed by another fullback, Sohail Abbas of Pakistan (tally: 328). He too scored most of his goals through penalty corners; except, in his time, it came to be called the drag flick. The drag flick came into existence in 1992 when penalty corner shots were allowed to go through the air; earlier, the ball was not permitted to rise more than 45 cm. So specialists like Litjens had no choice but to hit the ball straight. With new rules, it was convenient to drag the ball from behind for maximum speed and elevation.
The conversion of penalty corners into goals has improved. It’s not surprising to find a team exchanging high-fives, as if it has scored a goal, when it is awarded a penalty corner. Forwards try to make penalty corners happen. The commonest trick is to roll the ball to an opponent’s foot inside the penalty area. This has made the goalkeeper’s gear weightier. Other defenders often wear plastic masks to save their faces, and abdomen guards. The ball from Indian drag flicker Sandeep Singh’s stick can touch speeds of 145 km per hour —faster than most cricket pace bowlers can bowl.
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A deft skill, and a difficult one to acquire, the drag flick seems to be at the heart of Indian hockey’s revival. It comes as no surprise that it is being imparted by Indian assistant coach Jugraj Singh, who met with an accident in 2003 which cut short his budding career. But he is delighted to see the number of drag flickers in the hockey team today. “Sandeep is getting the limelight, but we have V Raghunath, Diwakar Ram and young Rupinder Singh who are getting better at this craft,” says Jugraj.
Strength, accuracy and anticipation are the three most important attributes for a drag-flicker, says Jugraj, who coached himself in this craft. He uses the word “craft” a lot while talking about the drag flick. “I have been training these boys and have found that not everyone can imbibe this skill. The ones that do become real stars,” he explains. It is like a well-executed choreographed act which takes three moves to finish. “It’s the most exciting thing in hockey,” says Jugraj.
And the real star of the moment is Sandeep who scored 16 goals, including a hat-trick, in the Olympic qualifiers. Sandeep says that it takes hours of practice to become an expert at the drag flick and it is not an individual effort. “It is a combination of the pusher, trapper, drag flicker, and we’ve worked hard on it as a team,” he says modestly. He realises the importance of having someone like Jugraj as the coach. “He was one of the best in the world at the drag flick and it is no coincidence that we as a team have got better since he came on board,” he adds. The Indian team scored 44 goals in the Olympic qualifiers, 20 of them through penalty corners. Talking about Sandeep as a drag-flicker, Jugraj says his biggest asset is his height and reach. “He is able to drag the ball further than most players can,” he says. Sandeep is six feet tall.
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Penalty corner specialists like Sohail Abbas used to be the envy of the Indian team and, says former Olympian Viren Rasquinha, at times the team suffered because of a lack of these specialists. Rasquinha played for the Indian team for over seven years and says that he has seen how teams all over the world are focusing on the art of drag-flicking. “Countries like Britain and Australia always had at least four or five drag flickers, whereas we never had more than one,” he recalls. Pargat Singh in the early 1990s was a specialist. Arjun Halappa was also considered good at it, but the burden wasn’t shared by others.
It was the Dutch who actually brought the art into existence, says Gurpreet Singh, the second-highest scorer in the World Series Hockey (WSH) and a specialist drag flicker. “We used to marvel at how effectively they used to execute it, and the defenders used to think of ways to counter it.” Now it is a different story, something which Jugraj identified when he started working with the Indian team. “We realised there was this gaping hole in the team, and the boys have really worked hard on improving their skills,” he says. What is the secret of a perfect drag flick, I ask Jugraj. “Team work is the key,” he says. “The plaudits might go to the guy who finally puts the ball in the back of the net but it is a team effort.”
Pakistan’s Imran Warsi (currently in India to play for Chennai Cheetahs in WSH) is a specialist drag flicker as well. Warsi says his role model was Sohail Abbas. “It is difficult to drag flick a moving ball and you miss more times than you hit,” he says. The key, according to Warsi, is not to let those misses bog you down. A lot of players give up too soon after repeated failures at the drag flick, he says.
Warsi, incidentally, leads the goal-scoring charts at the World Series Hockey with eight goals so far. Sohail Abbas, according to Warsi, used to probably take three seconds to execute the entire move. “It was like poetry in motion,” he says, of his senior’s drag flicks. Just like a perfect yorker in cricket, a drag flick if executed perfectly has no answer.
The Indian fast bowlers might not have learnt the art of bowling the perfect yorker, but the hockey players are developing a reputation at drag flicks. And they carry on their shoulders the hopes of a revival in the national sport. As Sandeep says, “Be it drag flicks or any other aspect of hockey, it is teamwork that matters the most.”
