s2h Team

Bhubaneswar: As India women’s took on the turf to play Australia at the FIH Pro League at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar, coach Janneke Schopmann’s voice echoed the loudest.

“Move. Pass,” the instructions to the team mostly came in monosyllables which could be heard at the opposite stand of the team’s dugout amidst the crowd cheering in the half-filled stadium.

But the coach’s efforts went in vain, as India faced its third straight loss in the tournament, going down 0-3 against Australia.

“I wish I knew the answer to be honest,” admitted coach Schopmann when asked regarding the scoring woes.

“We started really well in the first quarter. We created two or three good opportunities. We defended badly in my opinion and they scored. Then we made a mistake in penalty corner defense and they scored again. We struggled in our press. If you look at the statistics of this game, this was either an even game or we had more opportunities than Australia, but we couldn’t score,” she said.

The team couldn’t leverage the services of ace players Gurjit Kaur and Vandana Katariya, who returned to the squad after injury recovery. However, the coach refused to comment on the performance of individual players.

India had started off the tournament with 1-2 loss against Asian Games medallist China followed by a 1-3 loss against defending champions Netherlands.

“I wasn’t happy with the performance against China. We had let that game slide in the last quarter. We had a good fight against the Netherlands. Today, we started really well, but when Australia scored, we played 50-50. We do create chances but we need to score,” Schopmann said.

India will next face the USA.

Its worthwhile to note that its for the first time in many decades that India lost five matches on the trot, starting from losing to Germany (on shoot out) in the Olympic Qualifier to till now.