New Delhi: Terry Walsh, the Indian Chief Coach was a disappointed man who blasted his own players on the second day after defending their lousy game on the opening day. But today, the boys executed his plans, may be in part, but that was good enough to give shivers to the German giants who are the World’s top-ranked team and they are also the Olympic champions.

“I have quite happy with the team’s performance today. It was a quality game. The team was composed and showed a lot of synergy. Defence was organised and the attack was electric. Young players played really well. We are consistently improving and will continue to fight and play the same way in the next match as well. We need to keep ourselves motivated and improve with every game,’’ he added.

“India did several things that were better than the first two games. We were consistent in several things we wanted to improve. But one has to understand that it is a learning process. It is a fantastic tournament for us in terms of exposure. It’s especially important, because we are playing teams ranked in the top-5 in the world. We don’t get this opportunity every day,’’ the coach felt. “While expressing that some skills like sudden acceleration or change of speed which we were trying to imbibe was seen in today’s game,’’ he said.

When asked how long it would take for the team to implement the new things he was trying, the Indian coach said: “Frankly, I don’t know. It may take 6 to 9 months.’’

When another reporter brought to his notice the comments of Australian coach Ric Charlesworth who said: “India can do anything. They can beat any team in the world. But do they have the belief to do it,’’ Walsh felt the team is slowly gaining back the self belief. Today’s game is a proof of it,’’ he said before asking Saradara Singh to respond. The captain in turn explained how the team is working on different psychological aspects including rebuilding confidence and self belief.

Walsh continued: “In India everybody thinks the Indian hockey team should win every match they play, every time. Whether it is Asian Games or Olympics. They don’t realize winning at Asia level events is a different ball game. Now we are focusing on the big events. Slowly the results will come but one has to be realistic and patient.’’

“We have to genuinely produce quality games over a period of time. We have very good juniors who are talented. But they have to settle down in the senior team and learn to play their normal game and implement the plans on field when under pressure of playing big teams or when the chips are down,’’ that is what I want to do, said the Australian who is an Olympic silver medalist.

Markus Weise, Coach of the German team said: “it was a bad performance from our side. I am not satisfied the way we played today. There were a lot of mistakes in the field from our end. India lost first two games so they had to put a lot of effort and they did. India did a good job in the field with counter attacks and defended very well. They deserved the draw. Henceforth, we will focus game to game in this tournament as for us it’s a trial for World Cup.’’

ends