The Sports-India Community

GB 2 India 3 at half time.

GB were dominant for first 10+ mins and took the lead early. We got back into the match with some brilliant moves and went 3-1 ahead, but then our madness at the back and the usual idiotic umpiring got GB back into the match. As an example, GB had a free hit on top of our D ad their player deliberately ran 'away' from the D into our guy who was trying his best to get out the way, but a PC was awarded for not being 5m away. I mean, our guy had no chance to get away...Hopefully the second half will see the really biased umpire having less of an influence as he will be in the GB half. Any 50/50 challenge is given against us, yet a clear foul by GB is 'missed'.

Our play is brilliant at times and then shoddy and careless in the next instance. As usual, we are giving away too many PCs and not winning enough and there are far too many unforced errors or poor passes. At a guess, we have made 20-25 silly error and GB probably 2-3. They keep the ball and there passes always find their guys.

I hope we can tighten up at the back and not give away so many PCs

3-3. Another PC goal for GB. Sort of expected and I suspect we wil give away 3-4 more PCs in the remaining 20 mins. Only hope of getting a result is to score 1 or 2 more.

Another silly PC given away. Crazy stuff.

We lose 4-3. I could have predicted this a month ago!! Hahaha.

I think we gave away 8-9 PCs and won only 3. Our PCs never looked like being converted and GB scored 3 off theirs. Out of the nine, GB only earned 1-2 from clever play, the rest were down to our stupidity (3-4?) or the umpires (at least 3). The winning goal came off a PC awarded despite a 3rd party obstruction by a GB player. Unbelievable stuff from both umpires. Their first goal was well constructed, but should have been saved by our keeper.

We had all the skills and put together some brilliant moves, but too often we gave the ball away or decided to dribble unnecessarily. I also felt we dropped back too deep in the 2nd half. GB just kept the ball much better and their passes always found a free player.

I hope we get to meet them in the final and polish up the sloppy play shown today. A more disciplined all round effort should have seen us wining this match quite comfortably. How many times have we seen Indian teams do this?

Australia will be our key match. I hope we can beat Malaysia and Argentina, although that is not guaranteed.

We are in the final thanks to a 3-2 win over Argentina yesterday and today's 2-1 win over Malaysia.

The other finalist will be either GB or Argentina who meet in the final round of pool games. The South Americans need to win this match to make the final. Any other result will see a rematch of last year's final (& hopefully the same outcome!!).

We play Australia in our last pool game and I hope we keep up the intensity and win this match. I also hope we reserve our best performance for the final (just like the past 2 editions of this competition).

Just started following our match V Australia. For a change we scored the first goal of the match soon as I started watching, but since then we have reverted to normal and given away 4 PCs in 4 mins. Any hit into our D results in a PC. I expect the umpires will cost us at least 1 goal, so we need to score at the other end. We have 20 mins left.
We hang on to win 1-0. Nice result. The Aussies didn't look anything special, but still had 6 PCs and we had none! This despite having 61% possession and 13/9 circle penetrations advantage. That same old story of silly play in both Ds (gifting away PCs and not winning any at the other end).
We will meet GB in the final. The result will hinge on how many PCs we (or the umpires) give to the whinging Brits. I felt we should have won our pool game with some common sense play, so let's hope for repeat of last year's results.

India b Australia 1-0 and will meet Great Britain in the final.

We lose 4-3 in the penalty shoot out after the score was 2-2 after the regulation time...Didnot watch the match but saw the penalty where we had many chances to take the lead but messed up time and again...don't know who it was but extra cuteness during our last penalty( of the regular 5) costed us the match....

Shame we lost. Didn't get to watch the match, but heart breaking to lose in PS....and also to the Brits.

Junior Asia cup starts today. It will be a big disappointment if we don't win this. Malaysia and maybe Korea stand in our way, although history shows we can mess up whenever we play Pakistan.
We thrashed them 5-1 at the recent Johor cup. However, we thrashed them and Korea at the 2013 Johor cup but could not beat either at the Junior world cup on home ground a month or so later!

Got the start date wrong.
We start with an unimpressive 2-1 win over Japan. Least convincing win among the top 4 teams.

Got the start date wrong.
We start with an unimpressive 2-1 win over Japan. Least convincing win among the top 4 teams.

5-4 win over Malaysia today which virtually ensures a semi against Korea. Pakistan will play Malaysia in the other semi. I think Malaysia are the biggest threat and we will need to improve to win this. Today we were 5-2 up with about 8 mins left, but as usual, let slip our advantage.

Oops. got the format of the Junior Asia cup wrong.
After the pool games all 8 teams proceed to the QFs, so we will play Oman in our QF.

We will play Japan in the semi after a convincing 9-0 win over Oman today. That's more like it.

So we have 2 matches to go. I hope we can improve on our narrow win over the Japanese in the pool game. If we can get through, Pakistan (unless China cause an upset in the QF) or Korea will await us in the final. I have seen us dominate these 2 teams at U21 level but in the crucial matches, we have drawn or lost to them both!

Indian juniors crush Japan 6-1 to make the final!!

Pakistan edge Korea in the shoot out after being tied on the field. Hope we can keep our focus and win the final. Good luck to India....

India beat Pakistan 6-2 to win the Junior Hockey Asia Cup.