‘Why Adrian, why not Sreejesh?’
NEW DELHI: Indian team manager Harendra Singh answered a question with another question after the team’s practice session on Monday. When asked why first-choice goalkeeper Adrian D’Souza didn’t play the opener against Pakistan, his reply was, well, a question: “Why not Sreejesh? For us all players are equally talented. We will not differentiate between players.”
However, he later added that it was a ploy. The Indians knew that Adrian was being touted as the goalkeeper to guard the cage against Pakistan. The media had done its bit thinktank to introduce Sreejesh against the arch-rivals.
“We knew Pakistan would be preparing to take on Adrian and would be studying his strengths and weaknesses. We thought we would surprise them by including Sreejesh. We’re sure they weren’t ready for Sreejesh,” Harendra explained.
Sreejesh too was obviously taken aback by his inclusion but warmed up to the challenge, bringing off some fine saves.
The same applied to skipper Rajpal Singh who too didn’t figure in the starting eleven. “As the captain of the team he should have been part of the first XI. But we decided to spoil Pakistan’s plans because we knew they would have had a few ideas up their sleeves to contain him. In fact, his absence too threw them out of their stride,” Harendra added.
Midfielder Arjun Halappa said his team was desperate to prove their superiority against Pakistan. “We have been firmly united in whatever we did in the past few months. It is not money alone which saw us come together. We wanted to prove to the world that we could deliver as a team. It was our unity that did the trick,” he said.