There’s still a couple of years to go for the competition, but Taeke Taekema, the newly appointed penalty-corner coach of the Indian women’s hockey team, took a shot at a hypothetical scenario posed to him by Sportstar.
Imagine it’s the final minute of an Olympic women’s hockey quarterfinal at the Los Angeles Olympics. The Indian team has a penalty corner. What would Taekema want the opposition to fear most? Would it be a hard-hit drag flick, an intricate variation or some disguised movement?
Former Olympic silver medallist Taekema, who, with 221 goals in 242 international matches for the Netherlands, is considered one of the all-time greatest exponents of the drag flick, says he doesn’t want to know the answer.
“If they’re scared of the direct penalty corner, the variations open up,” he says. “And if they’re worried about the variations, then the direct shot opens up. In the ideal situation, they never know what’s going to happen,” he says.
Taekema says that if he has a coaching mantra, he’d want the Indian women’s hockey team to be impossible to prepare for.
That is both critical and increasingly harder to do, he says, in an era where vast terabytes of video research are being conducted in international hockey. “No matter how good a drag-flicker is, they will get found out. A drag-flicker who repeatedly attacks the same corner quickly loses their effectiveness. In the modern game, unpredictability has become the greatest weapon,” says Taekema. “The ideal situation is that they never know what’s coming,” he says.
The 45-year-old was officially appointed as the Indian women’s team penalty-corner coach last month, formalising a partnership that had already begun a year and a half ago.
The Dutchman believes there’s already been tangible progress, with India converting penalty corners at an impressive rate during its title-winning campaign at the FIH Nations Cup. “We were obviously very happy. Winning five games in a row and qualifying for the Pro League was the maximum result we could get. We were very good with our penalty-corner conversions too,” he says.
Elite conversion
For Taekema, though, there can always be improvement. This doesn’t necessarily mean hitting harder. He believes the modern penalty corner is as much about psychology as technique. “If you score one in three penalty corners, you’re very, very elite. What this also means is that even if you are one of the best penalty-corner takers, you miss two out of every three shots,” he says.
It’s how they deal with those missed opportunities that separates elite drag-flickers from others. The players who dwell on failure become predictable. The ones who understand probability move on to the next opportunity.
That lesson is particularly important in India, where expectations can quickly turn every missed penalty corner into a talking point. “It’s harder here compared to Europe because there is so much more expectations on the hockey team. The only thing you can control is executing your own movement as well as possible. I keep telling the girls, don’t worry too much about the outcome,” he says.
Taekema’s own move to India was driven by the search for balance.
After spending two-and-a-half years as assistant coach of China’s women’s team, an assignment that concluded with a silver medal at the Paris Olympics, Taekema says he had had enough. “I was travelling nearly eight months every year,” he says. Family life forced a rethink.
ALSO READ: We are building right foundation for World Cup and Asian Games: India hockey coach Fulton
The specialist role with India allows him to analyse video remotely from the Netherlands while travelling to camps and tournaments when required. “It was an honour because India is historically one of hockey’s great nations,” he says.
Full chain focus
While it’s the ball striker that draws the most attention, Taekema says the entire chain of the penalty corner is critical. “Every small detail matters. The injection and the stopping need to be as accurate and as fast as possible. They are the most controllable parts of the penalty corner because there’s nothing the opposition can do to disrupt it. But these can always become one or two per cent better,” he says.
Those marginal gains eventually become the difference between scoring and seeing a drag flick blocked by the first runner, the defender who first rushes out of the goalpost to block out angles.
Taeke Taekema, one of the finest drag-flickers of his generation, wants India’s penalty-corner unit to become harder to read.
| Photo Credit:
RAMESH BABU K
Taeke Taekema, one of the finest drag-flickers of his generation, wants India’s penalty-corner unit to become harder to read.
| Photo Credit:
RAMESH BABU K
The battle between drag-flicker and the oncoming defence is a constantly evolving one. Taekema reckons in one way things have gotten harder compared to his time. “These days the defenders run with a lot more padding. Because they’re more protected, the runners can run tighter lines because they’re less scared of getting injured. That means that they block more of the goal and the goalkeeper has a smaller area to protect,” he says.
But there’s the other side to this as well. “The rusher is covering a bigger area but this means the goalkeeper is probably committing more to one side as well. That means that if you can beat the first runner, then there’s a bigger area to score from,” he says.
Speed isn’t everything
While Taekema’s first-hand knowledge comes in the men’s game, he doesn’t believe there’s all that much of a difference between taking penalty corners in the women’s game too.
The mechanics, he says, barely change. “The positioning, body alignment and the way the ball rolls onto and off the stick remain identical. Where women differ is that they cannot rely on raw strength to rescue imperfect technique. The technical side for the girls is even more important,” he says. “Everything needs to be aligned to generate proper speed,” he says.
That does not mean women’s drag-flicking is somehow less effective.
“Goalkeepers react to what they see every week. A women’s goalkeeper is conditioned to women’s drag flicks in exactly the same way a men’s goalkeeper is conditioned to men’s drag flicks. Women’s players don’t have to hit with the power of men’s players. You don’t have to hit the ball at 120 kmph. What you need is to be difficult to read,” he says.
While India has a drag-flick specialist in Gurjit Kaur, Taekema says there are several others waiting in the wings. That amount of talent is what he says enthuses him most about working in India. “The sheer number of players that can flick a proper ball came as a surprise. The challenge is now to take potential into consistent international output,” he says.
By the time the Los Angeles Olympics arrive in 2028, Taekema hopes the Indian penalty-corner unit is recognised not for one exceptional drag-flicker but for its reliability. “What I want to see are clean injections, perfect stops and quality drag flicks. If we always give ourselves the best possible chance to score, that’s a sign of a mature team,” he says.
Published on Jul 04, 2026
