Junior Indian Hockey - men and women

[ssp]

by sameerph » Mon Oct 03, 2016 9:01 am

Yes, that is a good run from them. Armaan Qureshi appears to be one of the better forwards. Who are the others ? This is the area where we are the weakest in seniors.

Gurjant looks good. He performed well in the HIL. I also like Ajay Yadav and Simranjeet. In midfield, Harjeet, Sumit and Nilakanta could move into the senior team (Harjeet already has) and in defence, we have 3 really good prospects in Dipsan Tirkey, Varun Kumar and Gurinder Singh.

[ssp]

Our U21s have finished top of their pool with a brilliant 3-1 win over Western Australia Thundersticks. Won 4 and drew 1.
They will now play Victoria Vikings (who have Cirello, Simpson & Ford and GB's Gleghorne) in the semi-final. This is a fantastic performance by our guys.

[arjun2761]

Awesome results by our colts playing against some pretty good talent in Australia. Hope they can go all the way to a title here!

[ssp]

Our U21s have just lost their semi against Victoria Vikings. They came back brilliantly to level at 3-3 after going 3-0 down in the 1st half, but lost our 4-3 in the shoot out. very impressive showing in every single match of this league. Well done to all the players and coaches. I have been critical of Harendra in the past, but am to say he is changing my mind. I will be even happier if he wins the JWC. We should have a good chance of getting a top 3 placing there. I was expecting something special in the 2013 edition, but our team (6-7 full internationals) was dreadful.

Varun Kumar has been scoring lots of PCs and his defending and passing are first rate, so I would like him to go into the senior squad after the JWC. There should be at least 3-4 others from this team given a good run to see if they can replace the non performers of the last few years.

[sameerph]

Really nice to see such showing by Indian juniors here against a formidable opposition. We do seem to have some real good talent pipeline especially in defense and midfield. Hope they now do well in junior world cup . Is Harmanpreet still at eligible age to play in junior world cup ?

[ssp]

Harmanpreet is eligible for the JWC as he turns 21 in Jan 2017. I think any player who is yet to turn 21 on the 1st of Jan 2016 can play for the whole calendar year. I hope we use Harmanpreet. Maybe that is why he has not made the team for the ACT.

I watched our U21s and they played really well. It was a tight game and it was heartening to see our team come back from 3-0. Manpreet gave away 2 PCs that Cirello converted but otherwise I feel we were marginally the better team. Passing, trapping, marking and stick skills were excellent. There were no easy chances for the opposition and our discipline was good too. i couldn't really spot any weak players!!

Once again, have to commend the good work that Harendra and his staff are doing. If we maintain this kind of form, we should very hard to beat at the JWC.

[arjun2761]

Super impressed with the India juniors with 4 wins and 2 ties in their 6 matches thus far against the top Aussie and some other international caliber opponents.

Looks like they will be playing the Western Australia team for the 3rd place match - hopefully they can repeat their earlier league stage win against them.

[ssp]

Finished 4th after a 5-1 loss to NSW. Rather disappointing end as we had beaten this team in the pool stages. I didn't expect our guys to get too many results, so reaching the semis (and losing by shoot out) is very encouraging.

[ssp]

Harmanpreet is eligible for the JWC as he turns 21 in Jan 2017. I think any player who is yet to turn 21 on the 1st of Jan 2016 can play for the whole calendar year. I hope we use Harmanpreet. Maybe that is why he has not made the team for the ACT.

Yes, looks like Harmanpreet will be in the U21 WC team as he has been included in the latest team that is playing in a 4 nation tournament in Valencia later this month. This explains why he is not in the senior squad chosen for the ACT.

[ssp]

Our men's and women's U21 have started their respective tournaments in Valencia with contrasting results. Our ladies lost 3-0 to England, but the men scored an impressive 3-1 win over Germany.

[ssp]

Our U21 women's match against Spain is being streamed live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2iN5vd5Yyc

We are 1-0 down and are playing badly and are lucky to be only 1-0 down after 25 mins. Our ladies just don't pass quickly enough, have poor basic skills, look slow and have absolutely no idea how to pass the ball out of defence. Ball speed on passes is awful. Taking of free hits is a joke too. Each of our players will take ages to place the ball with their heads down, when the eventually look up, the opposition has set up their press and we simply give them the ball. Just like the senior ladies team.

Against the run of play, we equalise, thanks to some poor defending by Spain. Somehow we hold on till half time. Our centre half has lost the ball on top of our D about 4 times. Spain have no pressure when playing the ball out of defence and 2-3 passes down the flanks see them attacking our D. They have had 4 PCs, numerous circle entries and probably 60-65% possession.

Don't think I'll bother with the 2nd half.

I didn't watch the 2nd half and guess what?...we won 3-2! Clearly my jinx is still as strong as ever.

[ssp]

Rather disappointing show by the men's team today. We lost 4-2 to Belgium. In the World Cup, there will be 5-6 tough teams- Germany, Australia, Holland, Belgium, England and Argentina.

[ssp]

Our gamev Spain is on live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM-DxZrMaKo

We are 2-1 up at halftime. We are playing some excellent hockey and should be further ahead. Nice tackling and passing and some real pace and penetration up front, where Armaan Qureshi has been brilliant. We need a 2 goal cushion to guard against the umpires. The Spanish goal came off a dubious PC award.

We could win this tournament if we win by a 2 goal margin (unless the head to head record is the main deciding factor).

Our ladies lost 2-1 to Germany earlier today. Probably a bit better than expected, but the results at this level are unpredictable. As an example, we lost 3-0 to England and beat Spain 3-2, yet Spain hammered England 7-1!

[ssp]

We are 3-1 up now and our biggest threat will be the idiot umpires. PCs against us are guaranteed even if we sneeze near a Spanish player and at the other end, blatant fouls are missed. We have to put away 1-2 more of our chances to ensure a 2 goal win.

We hold onto a 3-1 win. No thanks to the useless umpire. At least 4 dubious 4 PCs awarded against us. I have seen this guy at previous tournaments at Valencia. He is always as bad as this.

So, I think we have won this tournament, thanks to Germany defeating Belgium 3-1. Belgium and India finished on 6 points but we have a better goal difference. What's more important is the quality of our play. It was excellent through out. So many good moves and great defence and hard running from all the players. Well done to the coaches and all the players.

[sameerph]

I watched second half of that match. We seemed a much better team. The attacks were incisive and if only finishing had been a bit better we would have won by a bigger margin. Anyway, some of these guys ( commentary was not in English so could not identify any of them) look so much more skilful than the likes of Akashdeep or Utthappa.