Arjun Halappa unlikely to play today
Star medio Arjuna Halappa might not play today’s match against China in the opening match of their campaign here in the 19th Sultan Azlan Shah Cup.
Arjun Halappa, second most senior in the team after recalled star Prabodh Tirkey, suffered a small injury at his right foot which is yet to fully recover.
“My fate of playing for the first match will be known only tomorrow when physio Shrikant takes another look in the morning”, he said.
He did not take part in the practice session the team had on Wednesday evening, though he was with the team and doing mild exercises.
Meanwhile talking to stick2hockey.com team’s coach Harendera Singh said that the youngsters will be the focus of the tournament.
“We have got seven matches here, the junior players here will have excellent opportunity to avail it, and we will see how they cooperate with the pressure. We need a quite a lot of youngsters waiting in the bench to fill up the slots at the fag end of the year. We have two tournaments in succession – Asian Games and before that Commonwealth Games – and the services of the juniors, that is the bench strength, is all the more important’, he said.
Amit Prabhakar, lanky Rupinder Pal Singh are the two youngsters in the team. Other youngsters include Danish Mujtaba, Mandep Antil, who was the standby for the last World Cup, and flashy Vikas Pillay.
Amit Prabhkar is from Lucknow, while Rupinder Pal Singh is from Faridkot, a product of Chandigarh hockey.
Danish Mujta played the Delhi World Cup, after this the youngster from Uttar Pradesh is getting another shot at big time event here in Malaysia.
These colts are rightly getting a great exposure, and some of them are even excited about it,