Indian women play Thailand, eye clean slate in HWL Round 2

NEW DELHI: In-form India would be eyeing to maintain their winning streak when they take on Thailand in their final league game on Tuesday, which will definitely boost their confidence going into the quarterfinal stage of the ongoing Hero FIH Women’s Hockey World League Round 2.

Going by present form and rankings, the Indian start as overwhelming favourites against the Thai girls in their final Pool A match at the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium.

India are at the top of Pool A with two wins from as many games followed by Poland. Thailand are at the third spot.

India had earlier spanked Ghana 13-0 before getting the better of Poland 2-0.

And come tomorrow, the Ritu Rani-led home team would be brimming with confidence.

The league matches hardly has any significant as all eight teams participating in the competition are assured of quarterfinal berths and the results of the pool matches will only decide who will play whom in the knockout round.

Indian hockey’s High Performance Director Roelant Oltmans, who is in charge of the team in this tournament in the absence of a chief coach, is pleased with the girls performance so far but said there are obviously areas for improvement.

“Looking at the less number of openings we gave away to our opponents so far, I think the team is doing very good in terms of structure and defence. We created good chances in the first game but in the second game against Poland we lacked in a few areas,” Oltmans said.

“But I am sure the future matches will be better. Our average percentage of penalty corner conversion is around 20-30 percent amongst women, considering we converted 4 out of 12 making it 33 percent. I am happy with the team’s performance.”

Meanwhile in other matches of the day, Malaysia will play Singapore and Kazakhstan will face Russia in Pool B while Ghana will lock horns against Poland in the other Pool A game.