Indian World Cup team defeats Combined Oil sector team 6-1

In what can be categorized as the first serious match practice on the newly laid Delhi’s turf, Indian team engaged a combined Oil Sector Team Wednesday night.

The Combined team has been culled from three Oil Public Sectors hockey teams, ONGC, Bharat Petroleum, and Indian Oil Corportaion.

The combined Oil Sector team included Devesh Chauhan, Amar Aiyamma, Ajay Saroha, Harpal Singh, Kamaldeep Singh and others. Sabu Varkey was the manager while Ramesh Parameswaran was the coach.

This is also first match on the turf on which the World’s best 12 teams will show case their calibre in two weeks time.

Accordingly to a player, it was a good game, one more match will again be played on Friday night. “We are happy we had a feeling of tough match, the world cup turf”.

Sandeep Singh, Dhanjay Mahadik, Prabhjot Singh, Tushar Khandkar, Shivender Singh and Rajpal Singh were among the scorers.

A couple of former Men’s team coaches like MK Kaushik, AK Bansal and Hockey India officials including Narinder Batra, Rajeev Mehta and others were present. Zafar Iqbal was the lone selector found time to witness the match.

Indian team got six penalty corners and converted two.

Said a coach about some players, “Dhananjay is playing a sensible game. Sandeep Singh drag flick was good, but poor in recovery. Defence in essence needs improvement. Over all, having seen the Indian game after a long time, I am happy the way they played the match”.

Presence of Hockey India officials prove they had patched up with SAI. It is now their duty to see public and media are allowed to be present. Of course, a gossip also gains currency that Hockey India are playing a double game in the sense they have a role in keeping media out!