Junior World Cup Hockey
On a night when India put 17 past Oman, Dilraj Singh helped himself to three goals and is currently the side’s leading goalscorer at the FIH Junior World Cup. The 19-year-old forward from Gurdaspur in Punjab didn’t begin his hockey journey as an outfielder, though. He stood between the posts with gloves on.
“My hockey journey started around 2015. I used to be a goalkeeper at Cheema Hockey Academy in Batala,” Dilraj tells The Indian Express. “I played in that position for a year, but my heart was not in it. I felt I could score goals. Mera mann kehta tha, thu beech khel, badiya khelega, goal maarega. So I decided I wanted to be a forward. I felt great straight away.”
Ask him if head coach PR Sreejesh, one of the best custodians in the world in his heyday, knows of his time as a goalkeeper, and Dilraj laughs it off. He has no intention of revealing the secret to him.
Not far from his village in Gurdaspur, Dilraj started working with coach Kulwinder Singh at Ghuman Kalan hockey ground. He says the biggest challenge he has faced in his career remains that starting point; when he picked up a stick, he had little knowledge of how to progress from there. And then, he found an ally in Kulwinder, who says he has been collecting footage of Dilraj’s goals at the ongoing World Cup.
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