Last year when the Indian women’s hockey team finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics, one Dutchman was as proud as the girls. Coach Sjoerd Marijne, in his four years with the team, had taken their skills and added strength and strategy to it, rounding off with the most important element — belief.
It wasn’t a surprise, therefore, that the former India coach’s excitement at India’s Commonwealth Games bronze medal could be felt all the way from Netherlands. “I am very, very happy with the bronze, defeating New Zealand. They deserved it and I feel they should have, in fact, won the match in regular time because they were so much better. But then to concede in the end must have been a huge mental setback for them and to come back from that to win in shoot-outs shows their toughness,” Marijne said.
