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Good news from the Australian league. Both men and women's teams won today.
Men are through to the semi finals and will play Victoria.

Good to see that these types of clinics r organized by our players ... Yuvraj Walmiki and his brother Devinder Walmiki kicked off the clinic of German coach Fabian Rozwadowski in Mumbai.

Hockey clinic by German coach Rozwadowski begins

jaydeep wrote: ↑Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:25 pmYuvraj Walmiki and his brother Devinder Walmiki..

The way they spell their name, reminds me of a PJ that I heard the head swamiji of the local Chinmaya Mission telling the kids in his Sunday lecture - "How to remember who wrote Ramayana? Just remember going to DisneyLand. All those Mickey faces fixed to the walls there... Wall-Mickey!"

I sort of heard this too. Wonder where!

- Varma

Good to see Sjoerd Marijne is a vocal about our known problems ... Hopefully, he will get the wrinkles out them.

Either improve intercepting skills or stay at No. 6: India hockey coach

"I think we can improve in every area. The Players need to improve intercepting balls because launching counter attacks is one of the strong points of India. We are too good at that and we can be a danger for any country. If we can't do that (improving ball interception), we will always be number six."

"Sometimes we are really good but the level drops too low, and if we do not work on it, rival countries would get goals against us. We need to work on consistency."

Now, this is interesting! -- HI to trial mixed gender teams
I love it, whenever anything innovative or original is done in India. Men and women together? A possible Olympics event? Comments?

Here's the squad for a 4 nation tournament in NZ- involving Belgium and Japan as well

Goalkeepers 1. PR Sreejesh 2. Krishan Bahadur Pathak
Defenders 3. Harmanpreet Singh 4. Surender Kumar 5. Gurinder Singh 6. Varun Kumar 7. Rupinderpal Singh 8. Birendra Lakra
Midfielders 9. Manpreet Singh(C) 10. Chinglensana Singh Kangujam (VC) 11. Vivek Sagar Prasad 12. Harjeet Singh 13. Nilakanta Sharma 14. Simranjeet Singh 15.Satbir Singh
Forwards 16. Dilpreet Singh 17. Ramandeep Singh 18. Mandeep Singh 19. Lalit Kumar Upadhyay 20. Armaan Qureshi

As usual, Mandeep keeps his place and Satbir returns. So only 2 players that will handicap the team

From the better performers (!!),Dipsan, Sunil and Sumit are rested and Sardar maybe out of the plans.

Some nice selections with a view to the future. I'm particularly keen to see how Dilpreet fares at this level. He is an outstanding prospect. I'm also pleased to see our U21 world champions Armaan Qureshi, Nilakanta Sharma, Gurinder and Simranjeet. In addition Uthappa and Akashdeep are rested.

Good to see some experimentation in a tournament that doesn't matter too much.

We start with an emphatic 6-0 win against Japan. 2 goals each by debutants Dilpreet Singh and Vivek Sagar Prasad. This is a very good start as many times we have struggled to put it across Japan with ease.

Matches can be seen live or on demand via this link:
https://www.facebook.com/nzblacksticks/?fref=mentions

Very pleasing to see Dilpreet and Vivek Sagar Prasad make such impressive debuts. Well done to the selectors for giving them a chance. Gurinder too had a good game. Simranjeet was a bit tentative, but I have high hopes for him too.

We looked pretty good, but let's see how we fare against Belgium and NZ in the forthcoming matches. I suspect we won't have as much room to play our game and also the physical prowess of both of these two teams has been too much for us in the past.

Surprisingly, NZ beat Belgium 5-4. Both teams are more or less at full strength.

Yes, good to see easy win against Japan. However, we do generally play better against Asian countries (except Pakistan in the past although we seem to have their measure now). Matches against Belgium and NZ will probably provide a better indication of how we are playing.

arjun2761 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2018 6:39 pmHowever, we do generally play better against Asian countries (except Pakistan in the past although we seem to have their measure now).

Still, a 6-0 win was rare. It was usually of the 4-2 or 3-1 variety, against Japan. That is my feeling. This is the kind of domination from a team at a higher level, the kind of which we have not shown in the past against even Asian teams, even if we beat them regularly.

India-Japan hockey, of course, began at the 1932 Olympics with an 18-0 win for India ! These days, it is rarer to see those scores, and 6-0 is terrific. (In 1932, only 3 teams participated in the Olympics, and Japan won the silver; the US won bronze, although it lost both its matches, including a 1-24 loss to India -- which made the US the first team to score a goal against India at the Olympics!!).

Seems like Japan would be the first one as India won 11-1 not 18-0 a week earlier per Wikipedia.

We lost to Belgium 0-2. A bit disappointing but 0-2 is not that bad if they are at full strength and we are having an experimental team with lot of young players.

Belgium were excellent and fully deserved to win. The main difference was the lack of errors from all their players. That enabled them to keep possession and dictate the game for long periods. Their passing and skills were superb. They are probably vying with Australia as the best team in the world right now.

However, our play wasn't bad at all. Our defensive structure looked good and as a result we did not concede any PCs. We won 4 but messed up all of them. On a luckier day we might have drawn this game (especially if we had quality strikers-see below), but on balance Belgium were the better team.

I have moaned about our weak players repeatedly. There was a 3-4 minute passage of play which underlined this. Satbir lost the ball on top of our D for the 2nd Belgium goal and in our next attack, Mandeep showed his 'ability' by losing control when under no pressure and soon after, missed a deflection in front of goal. He also messed up a great chance at the end of the game by firing way over the bar. I have watched this guy since about 2013 and see no improvements in his play. I don't know what the selectors see in him. The other player who had a shocker was Ramandeep. Mis traps or silly passes every single time. In any of the other top countries, these 3 players would have been dropped about 2 years ago.

In contrast, our younger guys look good. Harmanpreet had one incredible run that created a chance and was generally calm in defence. If only his PCs were more successful, he would be one of the best players in the world. Vivek impressed me too. Dilpreet wasn't given much pitch time but he is another with class.

Birendra is being tried out in the right half position. He still seems to lack a bit of pace since his injury and I suspect Marijne doesn't want to risk him in defence. We have tried Pardeep Mor in this position, but he seems to be out of the picture now. The easiest fix would be to bring Gurbaj back and then we would have some real penetration on the right flank. But our selectors prefer to pick duds like Mandeep, Satbir, Akashdeep and Uthappa