Sultan Azlan Shah tournament

[arjun2761]

Disappointing loss although this is a development tournament and it appears (from news reports) that we played without a GK for large parts of the 4th quarter when Malaysia scored. A typical performance for us would be to now lose to NZ in the placement match, so let's see if they can prove that they are different...

[ssp]

Yes, this is an experimental side, but the newcomers were actually OK.

The disappointing thing was the form of the 'senior' players. All of them were poor or awful. Rupinder Pal had one of his horror games where he can't do even the simplest of things. Sardar was guilty of losing the ball 7-8 times when a simple pass was available and made a dreadful decision to shoot from an acute angle off a PC variation when 3 Indian players could have tapped in a pull back. Surendar Kumar couldn't keep his hits on the floor and when he had a sight of goal, completely missed the ball with a wild swing. Akashdeep made 1 good baseline run, but then missed the chance and thereafter was appalling. Mandeep couldn't trap the ball or beat anyone and created nothing. Talwinder missed 2 really good chances and lost possession often. Sunil was awful-mis trapping and losing control of the ball repeatedly. Pardeep Mor is decent, but is not a patch on Gurbaj defending or going forward.

The younger guys were not too bad, with Sumit, Gurinder and Harmanpreet doing some good things.

My bet is that Manpreet (jnr), Gurinder and Affan will be dropped and we will get Jasjit, Uthappa, Satbir, Danish type of players instead. The real culprits- Mandeep, Akashdeep, Talwinder will remain.

So the one game I watched, we reverted to our 'stupid' mode. Which is at least 1 unforced error per minute in all areas of the pitch and for the entire 60 mins. At every tournament, we have one of these games.

[ssp]

We are 2-0 up at the end of Q3. Playing better than yesterday's game. Fewer silly errors, but forwards are utterly cr*p again. If NZ get one back, I can see us panicking.

Akashdeep and Mandeep are incapable of anything sensible. Akashdeep got in to the D and rather than take a shot, he simply passed the ball out of play!! Mandeep can not be relied on to make even the simplest back passes.

Sunil gets a 3rd. Surely, we can't mess up from here. Ended up winning 4-0. So we ended up 1 place lower than ideal. Yesterday's lethargic performance needs to be cut out if we want to win medals at a major tournament.

On this performance, Akashdeep, Mandeep and Talwinder have to be dropped. Mandeep will keep his place because of the goals he got here, but apart from one top class finish against Japan, all the other ones were deflections or tap ins. He is far to weak in passing or creating anything. I felt he was our weakest player at the U21 WC, but somehow he gets selected ahead of Gurjant or Armaan Qureshi. Talwinder was anonymous and is not convincing at all. Sunil had a really poor tournament too.

[prasen9]

Was Armaan fit?

[ssp]

Armaan maybe injured.

GB are leading Australia 2-0 after 24 mins of play. Didn't expect that.

[PKBasu]

After the horror show against Malaysia, I'm happy to see the 4-0 win over New Zealand.
GB beat Australia 4-3 (leading from start to finish) to clinch the title. Why can't we occasionally get such performances from our team?

[arjun2761]

Good finish by the Indians! I think this may be a good time to phase out some of the older players...

[ssp]

The team for this year's SAS tournament is here:
http://hockeyindia.org/news/hockey-indi ... -2018.html

Lots of youngsters being tried out, which is good to see as this tournament has no ranking points and is least important one of 2018. Some of the players needed a break, but disappointing to see Uthappa and Talwinder in the team. Drag flick duties will probably be shared by Varun Kumar and Amit Rohidas. We have been pretty poor with our conversion rate in the past year or so anyway.

I'd have tried out Hardik Singh, Manpreet junior (he seems to be out of the picture) and Affan Yousseff. At least there's no Mandeep, Satbir and Akashdeep.

[rajitghosh]

The team for this year's SAS tournament is here:
http://hockeyindia.org/news/hockey-indi ... -2018.html

Lots of youngsters being tried out, which is good to see as this tournament has no ranking points and is least important one of 2018. Some of the players needed a break, but disappointing to see Uthappa and Talwinder in the team. Drag flick duties will probably be shared by Varun Kumar and Amit Rohidas. We have been pretty poor with our conversion rate in the past year or so anyway.

I'd have tried out Hardik Singh, Manpreet junior (he seems to be out of the picture) and Affan Yousseff. At least there's no Mandeep, Satbir and Akashdeep.

Mandeep and Akashdeep need to be banished along with Rohit Sharma. There should be no place for players who perform once in 10 matches and then keep their places.

[ssp]

Mandeep and Akashdeep need to be banished along with Rohit Sharma. There should be no place for players who perform once in 10 matches and then keep their places.

We have a history of this kind of nonsense from the selectors. I feel hockey is even worse than cricket, where there is some media and public scrutiny. in hockey, 4-5 yrs of non performance does not matter, so long as you are in 'favour' with the blinkered selectors.

I accept that players can develop and improve, but 30+ matches should be enough to weed out the dross!

[ssp]

Predictable loss to Argentina. PCs were always going to cost us the game and sure enough, Peillat got 3/7. I think we will do well to get into 3/4th place match. I hope we don't lose to England.

[ssp]

Fairly even game, but we lost it because of conceding so many PCs and not winning enough at the other end. Our young layers did pretty well, but apart from Sumit Kumar, we had no creativity or threat from our forwards. Ramandeep had another poor game and Talwinder missed a couple of great chances. My other 'favourite', Uthappa was his usual self.
We moved the ball pretty well and made fewer unforced errors than usual, but still many more than the Argentinians.
Tomorrow, we play England and I'll be very surprised if we avoid a defeat, because we won't have the space we got today and the speed and physical side of the game will be higher than today....and the umpiring will be a bigger obstacle.

[ssp]

1-1 draw against England, so at least we managed to avoid a defeat. It was another tight game and both teams had chances to win it. We got 9 PCs and failed on all. I bet Peillat would have put at least 3 of those away and what was an even game, would have given us a comfortable win.

We defended very well and this was picked up by the commentators. The top teams move the ball around quickly and often create a lot of space by switching flanks. England are pretty good at this, but today, they struggled to get into our circle like they usually do, so have to commend the coaching staff for this.

Positives: Sumit Kumar looked good again. We kept possession and tackled pretty well. Lots of hard running to close down spaces and as mentioned above, defended well.

Negatives: way too many unforced errors (again), poor contribution from the forwards, too many cards because of rash tackling....and the expected bias from the umpires. We lost our referral on the PS appeal and were denied a couple of PCs in the last 3-4 mins. On every single 50/50 the umpires gave a foul against us as well as some obvious ones which were in our favour.

Sardar looked a shadow of his former self. I think this maybe his last outing for India. Sad to see this, but he just seems off the pace and a bit tentative.

[sameerph]

I have not seen the matches but if Argentina and England are playing close to their best team these are good performances as I think at least half of our best team ( or even more) is not playing here.

[ssp]

England are without 3-4 of their regulars but Argentina are full strength.

I think we have reached a level where interchanging our main players with youngsters doesn't make us terrible. Our structure and work rate ensure that we are not overwhelmed (I hope Australia don't prove me wrong!). I saw this at the recent New Zealand tournament and over the past 1-2 years (most notably at the 2016 CT in London). This is due to much better coaching and fitness and of course, the players' hard work.

I would also argue that some of our main players are hampering our results , so having fresh new faces can be a bonus. We all saw how good Vivek Prasad and Dilpreet were in New Zealand. Out of this squad, I like Sumit Kumar & Sanjeep Nilam Xess, not so sure about Mandeep Mor. Shilanand Lakra scored today, but I didn't notice him too much otherwise. I'm hoping both of these 2 have better games for the rest of the tournament.