The talented midfielder is using the Hockey India League platform to FIGHT HIS WAY BACK into the Indian team.
Gurbaj Singh is controversy’s favourite child. But controversy is something that the former India hockey player dislikes, and he has had little or no role to play in the disputes that have been linked to him.
Gurbaj’s induction into the national team, at the age of 18, for the 2006 Asian Games was nothing short of a trial by fire. He had come in as a replacement for the experienced and widely popular Viren Rasquinha, who retired subsequently. Since then, Gurbaj has repeatedly been tested, trialled and declared guilty of things, the lanky midfielder insists, he wasn’t even aware of. However, each time, he came out of these testing times stronger and more determined to prove himself.
“I don’t know why it all happens with me. I didn’t plan my selection in 2006. I was not the only one to be below-par or disappointed with the performance in 2012 (Olympics). I was cracking jokes with other players after training in 2015 when the indiscipline issue came up again. No team-mate of mine has ever said I misbehaved with them. Still, it all comes back to me,” shrugs Gurbaj, as he sits down for a tete-atete with Sportstar.
It was Gurbaj’s fitness that helped him make his debut for India in 2006, at the Asian Games. And, once again, it is his fitness that makes people shake their heads in wonder. “Even today, when I make the players here do the sprints before or after a match, he is the fastest and often the only one to reach the last level. Even the big foreign names wonder at his stamina. Not many can match him,” says Harendra Singh, the coach of Ranchi Rays in the Hockey India League (HIL).
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