The fans of hockey are in for a treat as defending champions India take on Belgium in the quarterfinals of the Junior Hockey World Cup at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday. It will be a repeat of the 2016 final in Lucknow when India came out on top in front of a boisterous home crowd and it's expected to be another nail-biter.
While India lost their opener against France, they came back strongly in the next two group matches and earned convincing wins against both Canada and Poland. They have looked dangerous every time they have pressed forward and have scored a total of 25 goals in their three matches.
What has been really impressive, however, is how they have fared from the penalty corners with Sanjay scoring 8 of the 12 goals that India have scored from PCs. Araijeet Singh Hundal, Sharda Nand Tiwari and Abhisek Lakra are the three other drag flickers that India have in their armoury and together they will pose quite a threat for the Belgians.
India men's chief coach Graham Reid said during a press conference of Tuesday, "We have been spending a fair bit of time practicing penalty corner attack and defence as it may decide the match tomorrow (Wednesday) for both the teams. We are studying what Belgium are doing in the past couple of days."
However, to India's dismay they will be going into the match without their mercurial midfielder Maninder Singh after he pulled a hamstring in his right leg during India's last match against Poland. Reid confirmed that he had to be replaced by Bobby Singh and it remains to be seen how the team fares with a new combination.
Another worrying factor for India is their defence. The team has failed to keep a clean sheet in the group stages and even against a team like Poland they conceded as many as seven PCs.
Despite the shortcoming, Reid is quite happy with the team's performance and believes whoever plays their natural game will be the winner. "We are also playing well through midfield and we need to continue doing that. We have started to get penetration and we are creating opportunities," said Reid.
While India have been doing well in these areas, Belgium's overall performance in the group stage have been satisfactory. They beat South Africa and Chile without any fuss and have been good defensively. But they have failed to convert their chances and in total they have scored only nine goals from three matches. Especially against Malaysia, they struggled a lot and had to settle for a hard-fought draw. Belgium coach Jeroen Baart said: "They built up a wall for us. We are not used to the style of hockey in Belgium and Europe."
Keeping the game aside, Baart sounded pleased that there won't a full house crowd at Kalinga Stadium to back the Indian team this time around. "It's pressure less for us. We are not used to have so much of crowd in under-21 matches. Looking back at 2016, we struggled in the first half with the environment that the fans created. We managed it better in the second half but by that time it was too late."
