The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : India Dark Blues has it tough

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 02, 2005

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Sport - Hockey

India Dark Blues has it tough

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: A senior National team playing against another Indian side would normally have been noticed for the command with which the team would have played if not the eventual scoreline.

That India Dark Blues, the main Indian side fielded by the Indian Hockey Federation in the Lal Bahadur Shastri tournament, fretted and fumed before managing a solitary-goal victory over the India Juniors on Saturday should provide some idea about the prevailing standards.

Before the drawn-out inauguration ceremony was gone through at the Shivaji Stadium in the afternoon, leading to an inordinate delay for the feature match to begin, India Light Blues had drubbed the India under-18 side 7-2. The juniors did well in this match, too, holding the seniors to 2-2 till the interval.

Corners wasted

The Viren Rasquinha-led Dark Blues team did not have a penalty corner specialist of calibre to score the goals that mattered.

The team had eight penalty corners and only off the last one, in the 59th minute, did a flick find a gap through the defence. This time it was Harpal Singh, for a change, after Kanwalpreet had found it hard to beat goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh or the defence with the earlier awards.

Gurpreet was adjudged the `man of the match' for his saves during penalty corner sequences, but it must be admitted that many of them were too straight or too feeble to cause him concern.

The Dark Blues frontline hardly managed a few combined moves. A sluggish Arjun Halappa, the only forward with any kind of experience, used in spells, could not make an impression. Prabhjot Singh was not in the line-up.

The juniors did a good job of defending, especially centre half Sunil Ekka and the full backs, Kuldeep Bhadoria and Tasaverjit Singh. The team's only scoring chance came right at the end when a shot on the turn by Prem Kumar hit a defender's stick.

Dhananjay Mahadik scored three, Tushar Khandkar two and Birender Lakra and Vivek Gupta one each as the India Light Blues started on a rousing note. Vikramjit Singh scored both the goals, off penalty corners, for the India under-18 team.

For his consistent display in the frontline, both in making the moves and scoring, Khandkar was declared the `man of the match'.

The IHF inter-changed the combinations submitted earlier to the tournament committee to make the `original' India Juniors as the India Light Blues side.

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