Indian women's hockey team looks for better scores in hunt for CWG glory

The Indian women's hockey team will now turn their focus on the upcoming Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games which begins on July 28.

Chief coach Janneke Schopman's team are coming off a tough campaign at the recently concluded FIH Hockey Women's World Cup Spain and Netherlands 2022 but will now eye success in Birmingham.

"Our performance at the World Cup wasn't good in terms of results, but we created a lot of PC chances and played well overall. It was our execution that wasn't the best. We will be focusing on getting our execution spot on going ahead and prepare accordingly for the CWG," said Janneke Schopman in a statement.

"We need to train better for the execution to improve," stated Schopman and further added, "Our manner of playing has changed, instead of defending more like earlier, other teams are setting up defensively against us," she added.

The Indian team will have a training camp before the Commonwealth Games in Nottingham. According to senior player Nikki Pradhan, the team is in good spirits as they get set to crank up the intensity in the final rounds of preparations before the prestigious Quadrennial Games.

"The mood is good in the team currently. We want to play good matches at the CWG and want to play an attacking game here. We weren't able to score too many goals at the World Cup but we hope to change that now," said Nikki Pradhan.

The Indian women's team won Gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games (Manchester) and Silver in the 2006 edition in Melbourne. More recently, they finished a very credible fourth at the Tokyo Olympics 2020.

The Indian team, captained by Savita will begin their campaign on July 29 in Birmingham with the game against Ghana, before playing Wales on July 30, England on August 2, and Canada on August 3 in the opening round.

( With inputs from ANI )