India put one foot in quarterfinals

Rohit Mahajan

Paris, July 30

Paris — sweaty, sweltering Paris — is oppressively hot, surprisingly so. The Indian hockey team felt the heat when it played Ireland today, and seemed relieved to get three points from the 2-0 win. With seven points from three games, they’re practically into the quarterfinals, with games against Australia and Belgium — both unbeaten so far, both with six points from two games — yet to be played.

Ireland seem to have improved much over the years, as the fight they put up against Australia and Belgium indicates — lost 1-2 to Australia, 0-2 to Belgium.

They put India under intense pressure in the second half today, harried the Indian defence with their forays deep into the Indian half, and came close to scoring. On a luckier day, Ireland could have ended with a two goals.

Captain Harmanpreet Singh scored both goals for India, the first off a penalty stroke, in the 13th minute, after Mandeep Singh was fouled in the circle. The second was scored off a penalty corner in the 19th minute when the ball deflected off the stick of first rusher Benjamin Falker and flew past the helpless goalkeeper David Harte in the 19th minute.

Indian coach Craig Fulton would not be very happy with the team’s performances — there were errors in trapping and passing; they conceded 10 penalty corners, and a superior team like Australia or Belgium would make them count.

Manpreet Singh, the former captain playing in his fourth Olympics, said he wasn’t surprised to see the fight in the Irish. “If you see their last two matches, they’ve played very well,” he said. “So we expected a tough game. In the last Pro League, they beat Belgium, and we wanted to not underestimate them. It was a bit warm, and we wanted to keep the ball so that they could feel the heat and tire. We kept possession and kept them under pressure, and that’s why they made some errors.”

Sukhjeet Singh’s assessment rang truer: “We thought we should have controlled the ball more. We were not able to do that for some time, so there was pressure on the defencehellip; In the second half, if they’d scored a goal, there would have been pressure on us.”

Luckily, PR Sreejesh stood firm in front of the goal. “We cannot give so many penalty corners against them (Australia, Belgium) because they have very good penalty corner batteries,” said the former captain, playing in his fourth Olympic Games.