With two wins out of three games, World No. 4 India are sitting pretty at the second spot in Pool A, which is being headed by the unbeaten Australians, who have a perfect record till now from three games.
Manpreet Singh
A resurgent Indian men’s hockey team would look to seal a quarter-final berth but defending champions Argentina won’t be an easy challenge to overcome when the two sides clash in their penultimate pool match here today.
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With two wins out of three games, World No. 4 India are sitting pretty at the second spot in Pool A, which is being headed by the unbeaten Australians, who have a perfect record till now from three games.
Argentina, currently ranked seventh in the world, are placed at the fourth spot with one win, a draw and a loss respectively. After a hard-fought 3-2 win over New Zealand, the Indians, who are in pursuit of their first Olympic medal in more than four decades, were drubbed 1-7 by Australia before the eight-time champions bounced back to outplay Spain 3-0.
The 3-0 win over Spain has definitely raised the confidence level of the Manpreet Singh-led side, especially after the morale-shattering loss to Australia but according to India’s chief coach Graham Reid, a lot of improvement is needed in every aspect of the game.
India conceded as many as eight penalty corners against Spain on Tuesday, a statistic which continues to worry the team’s Australian coach. “...but there are a lot of things to work on from an improvement perspective. The fact that we gave too many corners [against Spain], that’s always a concern when that happens. But
the team did really well in terms of defending,” he had said.
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