Riding high on its Asian Games gold-winning performance in October, the Indian men's hockey team today arrived here for the prestigious Champions Trophy event starting December 6.
The Sardar Singh-led team was seen in high spirits on arrival and the players were full of confidence and fervour ready to take on the challenge.
The team had been practicing rigorously having enough time to put in place their strategies and are now ready to implement them on the field.
Speaking at the airport, Director High Performance Roelant Oltmans said, "With every game we have played and training session that we have attended so far, the aim is to improve ourselves and widen the scope for a decent performance with each game.
"The team has gained a lot of confidence with the last two tournaments. This shall be the right moment to showcase our potency and learnings considering the fact that we have been consistently improving with every game, he said.
"We don't know how Belgium, Germany and Holland have practised and how well prepared they are but we are focused and have planned to concentrate on one game at a time and give a tough fight to the opponents leading to a glorious win in the tournament.
"There are no second thoughts that the Hero Men's Champions Trophy 2014 is going to help us improve and provide us some good experiences to transform us in a much better bunch of players," he added.
Speaking ahead of the much-awaited tournament, midfielder Sardar Singh said, "With the Hero Men's Champions Trophy 2014 round the corner, our primary focus as a team at this point of time is to play a good game and finish at the top of the table in our group."
"Post the golden finish in the recently concluded 17th Asiad 2014, the team is full of confidence and high on spirits. We will be aiming at sealing the top position in the tournament and emerge as winners," he added.
The nine-day tournament will see top eight teams of the world including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, England, Germany, India, Netherlands and Pakistan competing against each other for the title.
