As young Deepika walked up to take the penalty stroke against Italy with India sitting on a slender one-goal lead, Janneke Schopman’s mind swung back to their pre-game chat. The coach and captain Savita Punia both reckoned that if the situation arose for Deepika to take a stroke, she should go to the goalkeeper’s hand side. Neither knew that in the team’s training session in the morning, goalkeeper Bichu Devi Kharibam had saved all of Deepika’s strokes on that side.
Her thoughts swirling amid the sonorous anticipatory roar of the crowd, Deepika nervously stepped up and struck past Italian goalkeeper Lucia Caruso. Through the same hand side.
“That was a huge, huge moment for the youngster,” Schopman said.
“It was an important goal for me and the team, because we only had a one-goal lead then and they could have scored any time,” Deepika said. “I felt the pressure, the crowd was loud. But I had confidence in me.”
The youngster carried that confidence into Thursday’s semi-final, stepping up as India’s primary dragflicker and slotting in India’s opening goal as they took mighty Germany to the shootouts (2-2 regulation time), which the hosts lost yet remained alive for a Paris Olympics berth.
Plucked out of the junior setup by Schopman last year, the girl from Hisar who grew up wrestling suddenly found herself flicking as the senior team’s primary dragflicker. It’s a position left vacant due to Gurjit Kaur’s exclusion and the paucity of players with that skill in Indian women’s hockey.
Part of the 2021 women’s Junior World Cup side, the forward pumped in seven goals — four of them from penalty corners (PC) — in India’s victorious Junior Asia Cup campaign last year. Drafted into the Asian Games squad, Deepika finished as India’s joint-second highest scorer (5 goals) in Hangzhou. In the FIH Women’s Hockey Olympic Qualifiers matches in Ranchi, goals somewhat dried up for Deepika who, before the Germany game, could not convert a PC here in the chances she had (on some occasions, she hasn’t been on the field when India have earned PCs or the ball has been mistrapped).
Deepika thus couldn’t stop smiling after that Italy goal. The forward understands that not every tournament will see her return with a bagful of goals, and that the technical skill of dragflicking is work in progress.
“Dragflicking is very challenging, because most times there is pressure on the team to convert a PC and score. Mentally, that can get tough. But the team gives me confidence, and as a young player that settles my nerves,” Deepika said.
“The last couple of years I’ve learned a lot, especially after Jan (Janneke) picked me and brought me into the senior setup.”
Deepika’s rise as a dragflicker goes back to her seeds of wrestling. Growing up in Haryana’s wrestling hub of Hisar in a family of wrestlers — her grandfather and granduncle were both wrestlers — Deepika would accompany her elder brothers to the akhadas (mud pits). She picked up the sport but did not enjoy it.
Switch from wrestling to hockey
En route to her akhada one day, Deepika chanced upon some girls practicing on a hockey ground. “I instantly got attracted to it,” she said.
Going against her family’s wrestling tradition and wishes, Deepika switched to hockey in 2012. “My family tried a lot to push me into wrestling. But I loved hockey, I wanted to pursue it and then slowly my family also supported me,” she said. “Once I started playing tournaments and coaches kept telling me about the road ahead, I quietly kept thinking that I want to be there.”
The dabble into dragflicking came in 2017. Aware of the lack of too many options of quality dragflickers at the senior level, her coach in Hisar, Ejas Malik, asked her to start doing it. “He told me, ‘You are well-built, you have the wrestling roots, you have the power’. He thought dragflicking will be helpful for my career with the Indian team,” Deepika said.
Schopman then spotted her flicking ways in the junior group and fast-tracked her into the top level. Goals or not, the former Dutch player realises the value of Deepika in the team as one of the rare genuine dragflickers (Udita, who converted two PCs against Italy, has a slap).
“She’s a very good dragflicker, and I’m quite pleased with her performances in the PCs in the last few tournaments,” Schopman said. “She’s young, but her dragflicking threat is something that even coaches in Spain and from other teams that are not here say — that you have a good dragflicker. So, it’s not like the other teams think that we don’t have a threat. They are very aware that we do.”
Deepika herself is aware that she will have to keep polishing her dragflicking skills. Still quite raw and young, the 20-year-old is eager to keep doing that and play her part in filling the dragflicking hole in the Indian women’s team.
“I have a dream of going to the Olympics,” Deepika said. “But I also hope to get India to a higher level in women’s hockey. And to keep improving myself as a dragflicker.”