PR Sreejesh has got his post-playing career mapped out.
After a playing career that ended with an Olympic medal - as he called it, a farewell matched only by Sachin Tendulkar's in Indian sports - Sreejesh is now tasked with grooming India's junior men's team. It's the first step towards achieving another dream of his - to coach the senior national team.
"I want to have a career path like Rahul Dravid's," Sreejesh told ESPN. "From the junior level to eventually winning a World Cup. It's a dream."
On Tuesday, just his second day in charge of the juniors, Sreejesh was down to business. With two weeks to go for his first assignment at the Sultan of Johor Cup in Malaysia, he oversaw a friendly against a team made up of senior players and those on the fringes of the senior team. Stationed behind the goalpost at one end of the Sports Authority of India training facility in Bengaluru, he barked out instructions to his players, appealing to the umpires for decisions to go his team's way, but eventually saw his team lose following a fourth quarter collapse. What he said afterwards was perhaps the first indication towards the kind of coach he will be.
"You have to play from whistle to whistle. Nobody cares if you played three quarters well. You must play for 60 minutes, but these boys are fresh now, they will learn that with more experience," he told ESPN.
At this stage, Sreejesh says he wants to find out for himself what his methodologies and systems would be. The reason for taking up the job with the junior team, he says, is that it allows him to experiment and build a team and a set of players that he can call his.
The first task, he says, is to be a good communicator to the players. "How you communicate as a goalkeeper and as a coach is very different. Player-to-player communication is also very different to coach-to-player communication," he said.
Apart from the communication aspect, Sreejesh also has tried his best to come into the job as prepared as he can be. He has spent the last few months reading books written by the Australian coach Ric Charlesworth, whom he had once played under. Sreejesh however is aware of the need to keep with the times and adjust to the demands of the sport in this era.
"I will favour a style that suits modern hockey," he says. "I have to work with Craig and ensure the junior team plays a style similar to the senior team."
That is important, because the junior team is a pipeline of players to eventually represent India at senior level. Sreejesh doesn't want these young players to be found wanting when they get called up at senior level. His staff and him will act as a bridge for these players to eventually not have any starting troubles when they move up to Fulton's squad.
What can the players expect from coach Sreejesh?
He said he would be uncompromising on the players' basic skills and the team's structure, but that he would give the players the freedom to express themselves on the pitch as well.
"If I tell you to draw a lotus, how you do that is up to you. What colours you choose, you will decide. Similarly, I will have a bigger structure for the team. But I have to give the players the freedom to express themselves within that structure," he said.
He has set the bar high in terms of his aims for this set of players. "I want these players to play either the 2028 or 2032 Olympics."
"They are a fresh group. My job is to teach them what I learnt from my experience. In the senior team, players can handle difficult situations because they have been there before. These boys will have to hear the same things 10,000 times from me before they become habits for them," Sreejesh said.
For this young side led by Amir Ali, who has already made his senior debut, the aim is to peak at next year's Junior World Cup, which will be held in India in December. However, Sreejesh's first two tournaments come in the next couple of months with the Sultan of Johor Cup followed by the Junior Asia Cup.
Right from his first day as a coach, Sreejesh has set his goals, both for himself and his team. Just a couple of months after one of Indian hockey's great playing careers came to an end, PR Sreejesh is ready to write another chapter for himself in the history of Indian hockey. If it's as good as the playing chapters, then there are more good days in store for Indian hockey.