The Indian eves will assemble at the SAI centre in Shillaroo for a 24-day camp starting June 1 to kick start its preparations for the Women's Hockey World League (HWL) Semi-Finals to be held in Johannesburg next month.
The camp will feature all 33 core probables which includes fresh faces selected based on their performance at the recently-concluded Hockey India seventh Senior Women National Hockey Championship.
Hockey Madhya Pradesh's Swati will be the third goalkeeper in the camp besides regulars Savita and Rajani Etimarpu, while Navdeep Kaur, Hlunte Lalhlunmawii of Madhya Pradesh Hockey Academy, Ritu of Hockey Haryana and Jyoti Dahiya of Association of Indian Universities will join defenders Deep Grace Ekka, P Sushila Chanu, Sunita Lakra, Gurjit Kaur, Rashmita Minz and Nikki Pradhan. Karishma Yadav of Madhya Pradesh Hockey Academy, Nilanjali Rai of Hockey Madhya Pradesh, K Ngaihpari of Hockey Mizoram and Neha of Railway Sports Promotion Board will be the new inclusions among the existing midfielders.
India is grouped in Pool B along with USA, South Africa, Chile and Argentina in the Hockey World League Semi-Final to be held from July 8 to 23.
Pool A features England, Germany, Japan, Poland and Ireland.
"The idea of having the National Camp in Shillaroo was to get used to playing in a high altitude environment. Johannesburg will be at 1750 meters and Shillaroo is at 2500 meters so hosting our camp in Shillaroo will help us prepare better," said women's team chief coach Sjoerd Marijne.
"For now we train with a core group of 33 women and the 18 member team will be selected after the selection trials."
The Indian women's team started the new Olympic season on a high note with a series of wins starting with the Asian Champions Trophy last year. They also beat Belarus 5-0 in a series earlier this year and won the World League Round 2 in Canada.
However, the Indian girls also suffered a morale- shattering 0-5 defeat against New Zealand who are ranked fifth in the world.
"Learning from the mistakes we made in New Zealand, we will need to work on handling higher speed, be stronger in our man-to-man marking and we also need to improve on ball possession," Marijne said.
"Though we lost matches in New Zealand, it gives us confidence for the way we played some of the matches. New Zealand is one of the best teams in the world at the moment and we needed this match experience to see what level we need to be at in order to win matches against higher-ranked teams," he added.
In Shillaroo, the team will be focusing on improving their defence structure, speed and fitness.
"Besides, the emphasis will be on converting penalty corners, working on different goal scoring variations and also practice shoot outs," the coach said.
Core Group:
Goal keepers:Savita, Rajani Etimarpu and Swati.
Defenders:Deep Grace Ekka, P Sushila Chanu, Sunita Lakra, Gurjit Kaur, Rashmita Minz, Navdeep Kaur, Hlunte Lalhlunmawii, Ritu, Nikki Pradhan and Jyoti Dahiya.
Midfielders: Monika, Namita Toppo, Karishma Yadav, Udita, Nilanjali Rai, K Ngaihpari,Neha, Ritu Rani, Lilima Minz and Renuka Yadav.
Forwards: Rani, Navjot Kaur, Sonika, Preeti Dubey, Poonam Rani, Vandana Katariya, Anupa Barla, Reena Khokhar, Jyoti Guptaand Navneet Kaur.
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