Friday, December 6, 2013

10th Junior Men's World Cup Hockey: Slick Netherlands overwhelm India 3-2





How many times have we seen the Indian hockey team leak an early goal and concede the psychological advantage be it the senior men’s team or women’s team or for that matter our junior team?

The Indian junior men’s team once again mirrored the same on Sunday against the Netherlands at the Major Dhyan Chand National Hockey Stadium in New Delhi going down to 2009 runners-up by the odd goal in five.

The similar pattern of Indians getting rattled by an early strike was amply evident when Milan Van Baal breached the defence in the 3rd minute. India did have a great opportunity to draw level when they engineered a short corner two minutes later, but the opportunity went abegging.

The Dutch exuded a lot of flair and dominated proceedings even as India struggled to control the midfield rendering their forwardline ineffective.

The opening goal did bring the Stadium to a silence, but the crowd soon went delirious when drag-flicker Gurjinder Singh drilled home a fierce flick of India’s penalty corner in the 11th minute to restore parity.

Clearly, the Indian had the momentum to go for broke, but the Netherlands soaked up all the pressure and upped their tempo, consistently raiding the opponent citadel.

The orange brigade could have easily gone ahead had not for Harjot Singh’s stupendous goalkeeping, which kept India on level terms.

Harjot lacked support from his fullbacks, which came to the fore when Mark Rijkers helped the Dutch regain the lead in the 25th minute. Hardly had India put its comeback plans in shape, the world number three side made the scoreline 3-1 in the 28th minute when Milan Van Baal added his second for the day.

It was these two goals that knocked the stuffing out of India as they looked disconsolate trailing 1-3 at half-time with the writing clearly on the wall.

Akashdeep Singh infused some hope among the homer fans when he churned out the margin-reducer early in the second half, giving India enough time to not only pull off an equalizer but even score the match-clincher.

The Netherlands were in no mood to let the game slip from their grasp. They kept the Indian forwardline on a tight leash. Mandeep Singh was marked tighly while Ramandeep Singh had a sedate game. The non-performance of the ‘MR’ combo took the sting out of the Indian attacks.

The duo needs to pull up their socks if India are to turn over a new leaf and progress to the semifinals and beyond. Skipper Manpreet Singh along with his team-mates will have to regroup and come out all guns blazing in their second match against Canada on Saturday.


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