Much relaxed and eloquent, victorious coach of the day Harendra Singh feels the real world cup will commence henceforth and what was held so far was much like a 4-Nation.

Speaking to the press elaboratively after his team put out a sterling 5-1 win, Harendra said: “Four-Nation tournament is over. Now the actual world cup starts”.

A new format with 16 teams of four pools with cross over matches for identifying second QF qualifier
from each pool has been completed for four pools.

After cross, scheduled in the coming days, India will play its quarterfinal. Emphasising the significance of the quarterfinal, and obviously not to infuse a sense of achievement in the players, Harendra says the world Cup starts from quarterfinal.

“Actual World Cup starts from next game. I am happy on our success so far, but can’t be very happy”, the coach said.

Today India defeated Canada 5-1, such an imposing victory margin coming after many years.

Analysing the match against Canada and the way the Indians were tied down for better part of first three quarters, he said: “Final passes we are missing. We were unduly running for the goal. We have to wait for our moment, can’t rush towards the ball all the time”.

“We did too much running in the first half, but were hurrying the final pass. We have to get rid of this habit. We discussed this at halftime.

Dwelling on using Lalit as a centre-half for most part of the game Harendra Said: ”
This team has the strength, we can change any player any time”.

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Refusing to dwell on the outcome of Belgium-South Africa match which took place before Indian match today, ad whether the one-sided outcome affected India, he opined: “This team doesn’t look into any other team’s bedroom. Our target was 6-0, we won 5-1. We have to do our homework. We cannot depend on outcome of other matches. We have a target and we know if we achieve that we will reach where we want to”.

On using kick-packer even when India was leading well, he generously shared his thought on this aspect: “It was decided to remove goalkeeper eight minutes before hooter, but we missed that somehow. This we wanted to experiment irrespective of the result”.

When a particular scribe insisted on his view of Amit Rohidas who struck a goal through penalty corner, he shot back: “This team has 18 Rohidas. Which Rohidas you want me to talk about?”

India will play quarterfinal on Thursday