India began their World Cup campaign here with an emphatic 5-0 win against South Africa. However, there's a similar statistic that went against them in the match too. India failed to make direct conversions off all the five penalty corners they received — drag flicker Harmanpreet Singh's efforts being easily thwarted by South African goalkeeper Rassie Pieterse. Coach Harendra Singh though said he was not bothered about the direct penalty corner misses since the team scored a couple of goals [first and the last] off penalty corner rebounds. "We didn't stop two PCs cleanly in between and that's something we will have to look into later," said Harendra Singh at the post-match press conference.

India striker Mandeep Singh was guilty of missing at least half a dozen chances upfront though credit must go to him for working out penalty corners for the team through which he scored the opener — getting to the end off a rebound off the goalkeeper to knock in the first goal in the 10th minute. Two minutes later Akashdeep Singh tapped in for 2-0. Coach Harendra Singh later revealed that Akashdeep has had a change in role which is working well. "Akashdeep has good peripheral vision to send in good passes and can also beat a couple of players on the run. So just like Dhanraj Pillay was withdrawn from the striker's role a good 15 years ago and made to play an attacking midfielder's role where he played out good passes to his strikers, similarly, Akashdeep is our attacking midfielder, and did a fine job today," said Harendra.