The Indian hockey team's creditable last-gasp win at the Athens Games may have been inspired by the historic silvermedal-winning achievement of shooter Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.
The 4-2 victory in their second Group B match, against South Africa yesterday, has kept India's medal hope alive.India laboured from a 0-2 deficit and went on to complete the match in the last 10 minutes where the players proved thatskill and fighting qualities will always be decisive in victory.
The highlight of the match, in which the individual brilliance of Dhanraj Pillay, Baljit Dhillon and Dilip Tirkey was visible throughout, will be remembered for long. Not to forget the support shown by the younger lot including VikramPillay, Harpal Singh and Viren Rasquinha.
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Adrian D'Souza also excelled in goalkeeping on two occasions when he thwarted good moves from the South Africanforwards.
Though India's victory was commendable there are some grey areas which need to be improved upon urgently.
The forward line has not yet shown the necessary cohesion and the mid-field is also not supporting it to the fullest extent.
Frontliners Deepak Thakur, Gagan Ajit Singh and Prabhjot Singh did not do anything worthwhile yesterday. They seemed to be running around aimlessly with the ball and got dispossessed easily. This made the Indian attacklook vulnerable in the first half.
The forward line also looked disjointed with no concrete help from the mid-fielders, which could pose problems forIndian coach Gerhard Rach in future games. The sooner these mistakes are rectified the better for the team.
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This is where Dhillon and Dhanraj proved to be above everyone else and showed they were capable of gettingpast any defender with their dribbling and passing.
I have always believed that even in victory one has to learn and rectify the mistakes for further improvement in suchhigh-level competitions. Harpal needs to improve his tackling in the danger area.
Another major worry for the team is the performance of wing-halves Ignace Tirkey andSandeep Singh. Both have proved to be weak links in the defence especially Ignace who is proneto desert his zone and leave gaps frequently which have to be plugged by someone else.
Sandeep has to learn from his mistakes which became visible during the opener against the Netherlands.
South Africa were reduced to 10 men towards the end for five minutes which gave the Indian forwards more space. The Indians have been conceding goals in the first 10minutes which should be avoided.
Most of the Indian forays have emanated from the right flank with little thrust seenfrom the other side, which needs to be rectified at the earliest in order to stretch the rival teams' defence to thefull.
India secured five penalty corners and converted three of them which is an encouraging sign.
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The drawn Argentina-Australia encounter has thrown open the pool and is a welcome result from the Indian point ofview.
Hopefully, the victory against South Africa would make the Indians gain in confidence ahead of their crucial matchagainst the strong Australians tomorrow.
PTI
