FIH's Hockey Pro League - (Men's and Women's)

[PKBasu]

Decent preparations by the men's team in the lead up to the Olympics. The weather should be more conducive in the summer for our players.

[sameerph]

4-6 loss against Australia today. Australia went up 2-0 within 2 minutes and it looked it may be a thrashing which Australia has given us many times. But, surprisingly we came back strongly to take a 4-2 lead at half time only to sit back on that lead and allow Australia to score 4 goals in second half.

[Sin Hombre]

The women lost again, not that anyone was expecting differently.

[PKBasu]

The men are playing in Bhubaneshwar, I notice from the newspapers. Then we should be doing better. When will the hockey team get the Aussie monkey off its back?

[rajitghosh]

When someone does the equivalent of a Laxman and Dravid at Calcutta and Adelaide

[arjun2761]

Australia beat Netherlands 5-4, so they have brought a good team.

India squeaks by 1-0 over Ireland, so we remain #2 on a ppg basis but are certainly looking worse than that.

[ssp]

Our women have beaten Australia 1-0! That's a very encouraging result.

Sadly, all these results are a bit late as we messed up 3-4 opportunities to get to the Olympics. Still think we need to replace the coach and of course the joke selectors.

The men's side are doing rather better than expected so far, considering the dross we have selected. So many 30+yr old players that are simply too weak for international hockey. I mean soon as I see Mandeep, Lalit, Jarmanpreet, Raj Kumar Pal and the 'incomparable' Akashdeep, I don't follow the match.

We are champions at stupid selections.....in lots of sports.

[sameerph]

Our mens side drew with Spain 2-2 in normal time and won in shootout.

We are really up and down in performances. Beat Spain 4-1 in first match, drew with Netherlands and were up against Australian after first half but struggled to beat Ireland and now drew Spain in second match.

[arjun2761]

Result wise though we have been pretty consistent. Our men now have 10 points from 5 matches. Our 2 ppg is T-2 (out of 9) with Germany and Netherlands and only behind Australia.

On the women's side, we have 8 points from 8 matches, with our 1 ppg putting us as 6th of the 9 teams. On a ppg basis, the surprise team is China which is currently 3rd behind Netherlands and Germany.

[sameerph]

We drew with Netherlands 1-1 in normal time but lost in penalty shootout.

[sameerph]

Today 2-2 draw with Australia but lost in penalty shootout.

Overall, we have been very good in 4 matches against top teams Australia and Netherlands in this series- 2 draws against Netherlands, 1 draw and 1 relatively close loss against Australia in regular time. Quite impressive I would say.

[sameerph]

Ended our current series in India with a 4-0 win over Ireland.

Overall 3 wins, 4 draws and only 1 loss in these 8 matches against teams ranked 1, 3, 8 and 12. Mostly on par with our current world ranking of #5.

Now next set of matches in Europe in late May/ early June against Belgium, Argentina, Germany and England.

[prasen9]

Actually, slightly better than a #5 team's performance. If you consider the home advantage/conditions, then perhaps par for the ranking.

[ssp]

In my opinion, the men's results were better than expected. Performances were a bit up and down -scraping a 1-0 win over Ireland, a draw with Spain and the obligatory collapse in the 1st match v Australia, but we managed to draw 2 games with the Netherlands and one v Australia. That is very encouraging.

Of course, in the heat of a major tournament, we will always lose tight matches.

For the women, the only positive things are: the sacking of the coach and some close matches against the Dutch and a win versus Australia.

[sameerph]

Important round of matched begin today in Belgium for men and women- especially important for men, for women first set of matches with new coach.

Both men and women matches against Argentina today, Belgium tomorrow than repeat matches against Belgium on Saturday and Argentina on Sunday.