K. ARUMUGAM

India are the top seeded team among the eight Asian teams assembled here to either win the Cup – or achieving the another objective of qualifying for the 2022 World Cup. However, the Japanese had other ideas and handed down India a rather humiliating 0-2 defeat today at Qaboos turf. Indian chief coach Janneke Schopman is not happy with the result. The Dutch had shared her thoughts exclusively with  www.stick2hockey.com. Before that, she had a long discussion with the team especially with captain Savita.  Gist of what she explained:

“We made a mistake in the first counter, and conceded a goal rather easily within a minute I suppose.  We need to understand we have enough time. In deed the team understood that and created enough opportunities for scoring”.

“We were a little bit hurry in the end phase. At the end, you want to win. It did not. But over all we played  very decent, very decent game”.

Speaking exclusively on the failure of both Gurjit Kaur and Deep Grace Ekka in executing penalty corners. She did not mince words

“We spent lot of time and energy in improving penalty corners. We should have at least scored a goal. It would be befitting if we had scored a goal and that is exactly what I feel is an international standard”.

“I will advise each player to analyse and think ‘how can I further improve”

By losing today’s match, India will now be poised to meet mighty South Korea in the semis. But she had her own take on this.

“We came here to beat every team. What team will be in the semis should not bother us. We need to first beat Singapore tomorrow and then we will concentrate on the semifinal”.

“Who will be our semifinal rival is not a thing on which we will work on now”.