Hoping to fire cannonballs at CWG 2022 to end Australia's stranglehold: Indian men's hockey coach Graham Reid

Commonwealth Games (CWG) back in 1998, Australia have had exclusive possession of the men's hockey gold. India's twin efforts to dislodge the current world No. 1 Aussies ended in embarrassing drubbings in the finals, 8-0 at Delhi 2010 and 4-0 at Glasgow 2014.

When India lost to Australia in the final of the Glasgow edition, one of the coaches sitting in the Aussie dugout was Graham Reid. In less than 10 days from now, at Birmingham 2022, Reid will be plotting the opposite in order to end Australia's stranglehold and put a maiden CWG gold around India players' necks. However, Reid wasn't initially scheduled to go to the CWG, as Hockey India had planned to send a B team to Birmingham, so that the first-team players stayed fresh for the more important Asian Games.

But as fate would have it, Covid-19 pulled the curtain down on the Asian Games in China, forcing its postponement. Plan B was shelved and Reid received the orders to ready his best players for Birmingham. But Covid wasn't done with obstructing India's plans, as the virus gripped Reid and a few others at the national camp in Bengaluru.

However, a fit-again Reid is back now at the helm of affairs and took time out to talk with TimesofIndia.com at length about India's CWG plans this time. Excerpts...First of all, Graham, how's your health now, post your battle with Covid?It felt like a cold, to be honest. It wasn't even a bad cold.

So I was probably pretty lucky. The virus has overall become milder, probably...I wonder, as Erik (Wonink), one of the coaches here, had it and was really quite sick. I think that's the problem that the world has, that it hits someone very hard and for others it's not too bad.