A day of disappointment for India as men and women lose respective hockey Pro League matches |
BHUBANESWAR: Both the Indian men’s and women’s teams lost their respective games in the FIH Pro League at Kalinga Stadium here on Tuesday.
The women’s team went down to Spain 3-4 and the men’s team lost to Germany 1-4 in a one-sided affair.
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Despite the loss, Rajinder Singh put up a brilliant display with his runs down the right creating several chances. But with players like Harmanpreet Singh, Hardik Singh and Sumit not playing, it was never going to be easy, and Germany took full advantage of it.
Moreover, India failed to convert their five PCs, and that hurt them the most.
“Good play but not good on PCs and I’m not happy with that. We haven’t scored from a PC yet and that’s not normal for us. And we’re scoring field goals and everyone’s asking how can we score field goals and not PCs,” said coach Craig Fulton after the game.
Earlier, the Indian women’s team began well when Baljeet Kaur scored the opener in the 19th minute. However, Sofia Rogoski and Estel Petchame scored in the 21st and 25th minutes, respectively, to put Spain in the lead.
India came back strong with Sakshi Rana and Rutuja Dadaso Pisal scoring in the 38th and 45th minute, respectively. But the team’s intensity dropped in the final quarter and Spain took full advantage of it scoring two goals in a matter of three minutes
Speaking after the game, coach Harendra Singh sounded dejected and said, “We need to be more alert during free hits inside the 25m and do better game management. They at times switched off like what happened during the third goal. Lalremsiami did so well to block the shot from the PC. After that, someone should have stepped up.”
Sadly, that didn’t happen and Petchame scored her second of the night in the 49th minute. Defending was even poorer during the last goal when, besides Navneet Singh, nobody went for the block and Jimenez sounded the board from the edge of the D in the 52nd minute.
Meanwhile, in the men’s game, Germany began in superb fashion as Florian Sperling scored in the seventh minute itself. However, the hosts equalised six minutes later when Gurjant Singh found the target from close range. Manpreet Singh passed the ball to Rajinder, who ran down the right before offloading it to Abhishek. He in turn played it to Gurjant in front of the goal and he converted.
However, Germany were back in the lead almost immediately when Thies Prinz scored a minute later. Despite India’s fightback in the third quarter, Germany scored two more in the final quarter to earn an easy win in the end.
In the other match of the day, England men’s team won 1-0 via penalty shootouts after their match against Spain finished 2-2 in regular time.
