Times of India: Need to focus on converting chances: Manpreet Singh
Feroz Khan
BHUBANESWAR: Indian hockey team impressed with their quick counterattacking play in their Hockey World League Final opener against defending champions Australia on Friday. In the first quarter at the Kalinga Stadium, especially in the opening exchanges, India were all over the Australian defenders, repeatedly putting their custodian Tyler Lovell to stern test.
Those were fairly easy chances and had the team managed to convert them, the result could have been different.
“We got several chances to score throughout contest. We will focus on converting them into goals in coming matches,” skipper Manpreet Singh, who dazzled in his 200th appearance for India on Friday observed.
After coming close to breaking the deadlock in the opening 10 minutes, it was Mandeep Singh who put the home team in the lead that lasted nearly a minute before Australia equalised via penalty corner. For India, their age-old problem of failure to convert penalty corners came to haunt them again as they wasted their all four penalty corners. Their opponents fared a tad better scoring one of their six penalty corners.
Coach Sjoerd Marijne echoed Manpreet’s thoughts while praising his defenders. “The defence starts with the strikers and they did well. It was an improved performance (from Asia Cup). We did really well as a team but need to improve in few areas. Few penalty corners were easy and we need to convert them,” he said after the match.
Australia were rattled early on, forcing their captain early on to gather his troops and calm their nerves against a charging Indian team and a partisan home crowd. “It was just about refocusing. We’ve got a lot of guys with not much experience. When you are playing in front of such a huge crowd, sometimes things can get on the top of you. So, it was really important for me to refocus the group. Our quality wasn’t good enough and when you let that down at the start of a match you can pay for it. One goal in international hockey is nothing,” Australia captain Mark Knowles said.
Australia coach Colin Batch defended his relatively inexperienced side saying, “It was a great experience for them. They made some errors and they did some really good things. We were expecting that to happen. Not everyone has a dream debut. The noise and to play an international match in India, I think they handed it well.”