The Pakistani players have been confined to their rooms due to security reasons ever since they set foot on Indian soil for the World Cup.
No shopping for Pak players
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The Pakistani players have been confined to their rooms due to security reasons ever since they set foot on Indian soil for the World Cup. A senior player was even heard grumbling yesterday to one of the mediamen: "I wanted to go shopping yesterday to Connaught Place, but was not allowed. It's so sad that we can't roam freely in a country that is so close to ours in terms of culture and heritage," the player said as he was whisked away by security personnel who asked him to not spend too much time with the scribes gathered to interview him.
Having gone down 2-5 to Australia on Tuesday night, many would have expected the Indian hockey team to train even harder ahead of their crucial Pool B tie against Spain today.
However, yesterday Rajpal Singh and Co skipped their practice session at the Dhyan Chand National Stadium and had a series of team meetings at the hotel.
"We have a series of strategy meetings since we will be missing Shivendra Singh (suspended due to an on-field incident with a Pakistan player) again and we have to plan on the optimum utilisation of our substitutes since we have only four on the bench instead of the normal five," one of the support staff members told MiD DAY yesterday.
Video referrals are a blessing
The video referral system used in the World Cup has come in for a lot of criticism from those who believe it hampers the flow of the game. However, the process that permits a player, umpire or team to ask for a video referral in between a match to clarify certain doubtful on-field calls or decisions, can only promote fair play.
Given the speed at which the game is played, it is next to impossible for the two on-field umpires to always be spot-on with their decisions. The video referral system therefore, just like the third umpire in cricket eradicates the possibility of manual error to a great extent.
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