Honestly, it was such a huge relief that we finally picked up full three points after our 5-3 win against Malaysia last night. It meant that we took a big step forward in our endeavour to qualify for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
There is nothing like a victory to perk the team up and after our disappointing 1-1 draw with Belgium on Day One, it certainly was a good feeling on Thursday.
Having said that, not for a moment is there any room for complacency. No doubt, it was a good comeback by our boys after trailing 0-2 early in the game and win from that position, but then, I am concerned about the 12 penalty corners we conceded to Malaysia.
It was to our advantage that the Malaysians did not have somebody like Sohail Abbas to convert their penalty corners, though they did succeed with the first two. Thereafter, we managed to come through the 10 and eventually win.
Like I said at the post-match press conference, we need to look deep and hard at our defense to analyse the reasons for the huge number of penalty corners we conceded. I thought our trapping of the ball was not quite up to the mark.
The boys told me that they got bad bounce when they tried to stop the ball, but then, the fact remains that we committed mistakes that allowed the Malaysians to put us under pressure.
Initially, when we fell 0-2 down, I was a bit disturbed, because, in today’s hockey, you simply cannot afford to relax even for a moment. Though I was confident that we would eventually win the game, I was still anxious.
On the positive side, I thought our forwards played quite well, and they received better support from the half-line. I did make a couple of small changes. Ignace Tirkey was asked to play a bit up so that he can move with the forwards and lend our attacks a bit more weight.
The overall strategy was to play attacking hockey as we all knew that we needed to win the game to stay in the race. In this context, I was quite happy that we scored five goals and I thought we could have scored a few more. But Deepak Thakur missed a couple of sure goals and Prabhjot failed once. Had we converted these chances, then the margin of victory would have been much bigger.
I was also happy that the forwards are settling into a good rhythm as there was much more co-ordination against Malaysia than was the case when we played Belgium on the first day. Of course, there is still a lot of scope for improvement that I think will happen as the tournament progresses.
Gagan Ajit Singh scored two good goals for us last night and he is now learning to play a dual role of not only being an out and out striker but also fall back to help the defense. Of course, this imposes a bit of load on him, but I am quite sure that he will learn to shoulder the responsibility.
Now, with four points from two matches, we look ahead to three more games in the league, against Pakistan on Saturday, followed by two back-to-back contests against New Zealand on Monday and Canada on Tuesday. All these matches will be tough.
I had mentioned in one of my earlier columns that all the 12 teams have come here after a lot of training and very determined to qualify for Athens. Under the circumstances, there is pressure on all of us.
You just cannot assume that you can beat a team or speculate on the points you can collect. For me, I am taking one match at a time while not losing sight of the ultimate target that is to qualify for the Olympics.
After two matches, no team can be sure of anything. There is still a lot of hockey to be played in this tournament and I will not be surprised if the suspense continues well into next week. So, at this point, I would not hazard a prediction or a guess as to the eventual outcome. It is best to wait and see how the events unfold.
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