Our match against South Africa on Saturday was our penultimate assignment in this tour. As expected, the South Africans came with a determination to outdo us, but could not. We defeated them 4-3. Though the scoreline gives an impression that the match was a close one, the reality was otherwise.
We dominated the proceedings right through. Our forwards Arjun Halappa, Gagan Ajit, Inderjeet Singh Chadda and Deepak Thakur constantly troubled their defence. As a result, we created more chances, at least twice than the Africans. As we witnessed in some matches in the past, we failed to utilised those chances due to somewhat panic action inside the circle. Ours is not a new team, and it was not expected of them. At least we could have generated more penalty corners than what we ultimately got – token one. Manufacturing penalty corner is an art, with which were not unfamiliar.
Left winger Prabhjot Singh continued to sit on the sidelines, and we feel regular missing of a winger. After the last Asian Games,
Due to our aggressive game, the South Africans had to rely heavily on counter attacks, which is not their natural game. However, they were successful in extracting half a dozen penalty corners from us. Some of them could have been avoided, but mistakes occur in the heat of the moment. Greg Nicol is one of the most nippy and opportunistic forwards of the contemporary hockey. Bimal Lakra and Viren Rasquina mostly marked him, still he twice scored. We will watch him out in our next match.
Harpal did a good job in defending the penalty corners as the first rusher. He was hit hard on the thigh two, three times, but the youngster did not crack. It is always tough to defend penalty corners on the synthetic turf. I myself used to be the penalty corner striker, especially in the 1980 Moscow Olympics and 1982 World Cup. I know how powerful the strikes will be. It needs immense courage and mental toughness to come on the flight of such fast moving ball. To that extent I am happy with our defence in the match.
On the other hand, we could not test our penalty corner hitmen as we got just one token penalty corner. Now my strategy for the next match will be to use both Len Aiyappa, who was given rest today, and Jatinder Pal Singh together so that both will have clear chances at the penalty corner situations.
This was our first full points in the Sydney leg. Our sloppy performance against the Malaysians in the opener has doused our hopes. We will now again take on coach Revington’s Africans for the bronze medal match on Sunday. When we were here in the last summer, we played the final, which will now be played between the hosts and Malaysia. We regret for not being able to defend our title here, but as I often told, situation was different then and now. Our injury list is on the increase, which was unexpected.