India top group even with room to improve

Harmanpreet's men take on Japan for a place in the final today.

At the end of the pool stage, it is no surprise that India, the team ranked No. 4 in the men’s FIH world rankings, topped the group at the Asian Champions Trophy in Chennai. Without analysing the minute details, that is the first part of the mission accomplished.

A big win against China (7-2) was followed by a tight draw against Japan (1-1), which was – in hindsight – a result of the team still settling down from the Spain trip to a new set-up here in Chennai. Harmanpreet Singh and Co took the off-day to recover and responded with a bang against Malaysia (5-0) in what has been their most complete performance so far.

Going back-to-back hasn’t been easy for teams and it somewhat showed against Korea the next day (3-2) in a close win. The Craig Fulton-coached side, however, finished the league phase strongly, defeating Pakistan 4-0, and ending their arch rivals’ semifinals hopes too for good measure.

As top teams must do, India have done one thing well in each of their matches so far: to identify an area to improve. After the match against China, conceding two goals to defensive mistakes was seen as soft. Against Japan, a PC conversion rate of 1/14 was surely not ideal, though equal credit was given to the visitors’ set-piece defence.

Against Korea, the team invited pressure by conceding a series of PCs late on, letting in a goal to make it tighter than it needed to be. In the high-profile match against Pakistan, the start wasn’t admittedly good and if the away team had scored first (like Japan did) perhaps the complexion could have changed a bit.

And yet, from all these situations, India still did enough to emerge with four wins and a draw, with 20 goals scored and just five conceded in the sweltering Chennai humidity. It is a return that Harmanpreet and Fulton are bound to be satisfied with, overall. That there is still room to improve augurs well for the Indian team ahead of the semifinal against Japan.

One of those areas will have to be better conversion in the final third. While penalty corner conversion was just around 7% against Japan, and a slightly better 33.33% against Korea and Malaysia, Harmanpreet was in good touch against Pakistan and China. In Varun Kumar and Jugraj Singh too, there have emerged good back-up opportunities.

But the lack of field goal conversion is a concern. A total of 144 circle entries across the five matches has led to only six field goals for India. Mandeep Singh and Karthi Selvam have worked hard without the output to show for it (one field goal each), while Akashdeep Singh has only had flashes of brilliance. The latter missed an open goal against Pakistan too, highlighting perhaps the lack of sharpness to finish off flowing moves.

Against Japan on Friday, India will have to do better with their chances, and do so early.

“Just looking at the Pakistan performance, we had some good consistency in each quarter,” Fulton said in the press conference on Wednesday. “Which we did the same during the Japan game. In each quarter we had more circle entries than Japan, I was looking at the stats. So, it will be about that consistency, we have to find the back of the net at some point. PCs or field goals, we plan for both. It’s not just one way.”

And so India must get ready for potentially two high intensity matches to finish this campaign on a high before the marquee event at Asian Games next month.

Fulton summed up, looking forward to the last couple of matchdays, “We have done well so far. That’s fine, we wanted to finish top of the group. But now the tournament starts, now it’s game on. Consistency on back-to-back days is not easy. We have had a lot of games recently. If we look at the way we are playing or trying to play, we have done more good than bad, so I am happy with that.”

While Malaysia face Korea in the opening match on Friday, India will take on Japan in the second semifinal. The final will be played on Saturday.