new delhi indias training environment is second to none and the national team can hit the top gear by the end of this year asserted chief coach graham reid who has adopted a conservative approach to train his playersforced to hit pause the button after touching its alltime highest world ranking of fourth the indian mens hockey team did not train for more than five months due to the covid19 pandemican optimistic reid said even though the future looks uncertain with no international competition scheduled for this year the side can regain the intensity by the end of this yearits not just india the rest of the world has been affected by the covid every hockey playing nation is in the same mode but the good thing is that we are on the right path now it is definitely going to take a while for us to return the australian told pti in an exclusive interviewbut by the end of this year probably by novemberdecember we expect to return to where we were because if we are able to train without any hindrance our environment is second to nonethe best thing is that we have a centralised training environment just like australia has in perthhaving spent the entire period here in india since the outbreak of the virus reid a former coach of the australian team is aware of the approach he and his support staff needs to adopt in the prevailing circumstancesthe good thing is that the players have started what they love doing go onto the field but we are taking a very conservative approach we are not going too fast he saidwe are right now just focussing on fitness and skill training making sure that players are getting their skills back monitor everything with gps with emphasis on control over a players workloadthe ongoing camp that began on august 19 is scheduled to end on september 30 but the coach hinted that it can be extended till november if the situation demands and external factors are under controli am confident that we will be able to create an environment for competitive hockey if everything is under control but we will be assessing the situation which can change anytime depending on circumstances reid saidpersonally i would like the players to stay inside the sai campus here and continue training till novemberreid however refused to take a definitive call on normal resumption of training of six male players including national captain manpreet singh who had tested positive for covid19the sports authority of india sai in conjunction with other stakeholders have created a standard operating procedure sop which we are following all the timeso only time will tell when they return to full fitness it is impossible to predict but as i said earlier we are adopting a conservative approach he saidbesides manpreet striker mandeep singh defenders surender kumar and jaskaran singh dragflicker varun kumar and goalkeeper krishan bahadur pathak required hospitalisation after testing positive for the virus when