India tour to New Zealand - October 2015

[sameerph]

Indian Hockey team will travel to New Zealand for a 4 test series and the team is picked for that -

Dharamvir, Manpreet back in the squad

We have losing to NZ time and again in recent time. NZ are also struggling to qualify for Rio and will be keen to prepare themselves well for the Oceania qualifying tournament which they need to win . So, it will be good test of where we stand under Oltmans,

[PKBasu]

NZ won the Olympic gold in 1976, the year astro-turf was first introduced -- and India slumped to 7th (despite having won the World Cup a year earlier). That continues to rankle, although NZ have never again won an Olympic medal. We have a special problem against NZ in all sports other than cricket (occasionally) it seems. Let's win there without revealing too many of our special tricks (eg with drag flicks).

[srini]

India starts the series with a 3-1 victory.

[jaydeep]

This win was against New Zealand A team ... We r going to play one more match against same team before four matches test series.

[ssp]

Good idea to arrange this tour. It will be interesting where we stand as NZ have been too strong for us since about 2004.
I still have reservations about 6/7 members of this squad but looks like our selectors are blind to the inadequacies of some players but are quick to discard the likes of Gurbaj.

Apparently he and a few others have been accused of groupism:
http://stick2hockey.com/Article/The-Tri ... 12457.html

[jaydeep]

In the second match we defeated New Zealand 'A' Team by 2-1 ... Both the goals scored by SK Uthappa ... Now real test begins.

[arjun2761]

Good performance so far to win both initial matches. Hopefully, they can win the series against the NZ top team.

Apparently, the games will be streamed live on a link at the Hockey NZ website.

[ssp]

2-0 down at half time. Poor stuff from most of our guys and the umpires. Too many errors and mis traps. We fail to win any of lose balls.
Birendra has had a shocker so far. Not sure about Jasjit either. Otherwise, usual culprits losing the ball repeatedly- Chinglensana, Uthappa, Ramandeep.
I can see NZ scoring more because they are making something happen from every right sided move and they will have the umpires!
Lucky to be only 2-0 at 3/4 time. NZ are simply more composed and are able to pass safely and easily from the back. We are looking a bit silly with aimless aerials, idiotic passes which are easily intercepted.
More effort in the last quarter but too dumb and the better chances still falling to NZ

[sameerph]

It ended up with a 0-2 loss. I only watched the last quarter but fully agree with SSP's assessment. We were losing the ball quite easily and NZ looked much the better composed side. We need to improve a lot to win against them. But, not sure if it will happen with this team.

[ssp]

NZ will win every time if we play like this. Maybe once in a while we can play better but to win we need to improve quite a lot.

I don't have much confidence in several of our players. Jasjit looks awkward in possession, doesn't slap pass accurately and lacks the skills of Gurbaj or Vinaya or Pardeep Mor. I have moaned about Uthappa, Chinglensana, Dharamvir, Akashdeep etc for ages.

We are easily dispossessed, make difficult passes, mis trap, ball speed (especially at the back) is too slow and are plain stupid when in the attacking 23. To compound this, we lose every 60/40 tackle, don't mark closely enough....and have to contend with biased umpires.
Not much hope with all of the above!

[sameerph]

In the second match, we are leading 1-0 at the start of second half. I have watched only few glimpses of the match thru work but from that appears to be a more committed effort from our defense and forwards. They need to keep that up though.

[sameerph]

Shreejesh made a lot of saves but NZ finally converted thru a PC to equal it at 1-1 at the end of Q3.

And we score a very goof field goal thru right to go up 2-1 with 8 mins. to go.

That goal was from Lalit and then Nikin Thimmaiah slots in another one for 3-1 lead .

And the match end at that score with us winning 3-1.

That is a pretty good win that we have got over NZ after quite some time.

Looking forward to comments from SSP if he watched the match as I could only watch only small parts of it.

[ssp]

Good result. Only watched till half time.
Performance was way better than yesterday, but that is not saying much. We marked much better so there were no easy moves into our D.
However, unforced errors were still at about 1 a minute! NZ committed about a third fewer stupid mistakes.
Ball speed is still lethargic and quite often we get hemmed in our half and simply gift the ball away. We need Gurbaj as he is a brilliant outlet on the right and way more creative than anyone else that has been tried there. Up front, we are still getting less than 25% from circle penetrations ( no shot at goal or a PC). Our guys just get tackled too easily.
Still, very pleased to beat NZ. Doesn't happen often these days!

[PKBasu]

Wow! Winning 3-1 against NZ in NZ is a very nice result!

[ssp]

Watched the second half and I think we deserved to win, but rode our luck a bit. Our 3rd goal was a gift because the Kiwis had taken their keeper off and we got lucky with an umpiring decision (!!!), in our D and broke quickly to score with a few seconds left.
I have seen our teams lose lots of matches like this- play quite well and be the better team but commit suicide at the back and miss horribly when in good scoring positions. Today NZ missed all but one of their half dozen PCs. We got only 2, one of which saw a comically wayward push out. We gifted 2-3 PCs and at the other end failed to manufacture PCs from several promising circle penetrations.
I can't understand why we were so slack yesterday. We lost every single tackle and didn't bother too much with marking ! Why? That maddening unprofessionalism refuses to go away despite some of our guys having played 100+ times at this level.
Kothajit hasn't played in this series so far. He is much better option than Chinglensana who is too weak on the ball. Mandeep did absolutely nothing apart from run around with no purpose and gave fouls with silly tackles! He doesn't doesn't create any pressure when the opposition defenders are trying to play the ball into our half.
Unforced errors were marginally less than yesterday but still at the usual 1 every single minute of the game.
Still, good to see a win,. Let's hope for improvements in the remaining 2 matches.