Basil
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Penalty corner conversion hurting India yet again
Indian hockey has a penalty corner headache.Losing a ball on top of the circle while deliberately holding on to it or being left with no idea inside the rivals' sphere are infectious Indian habits afflicting even the domestic teams. After all, there is little glory in forcing a penalty corner that may or may not get converted.
Manufacturing penalty corners when a striker is confronted with a no-gain situation upfront is not tactically ingrained in India's hockey minds. Watching England create the penultimate minute penalty corner that produced the winner against India would probably have ignited a thought among the Indian players that forceful creation of a penalty corner can be a hockey strategy when nothing else is working.
Rival coaches did not have to worry too much about the Indians finding a way through their body tackles or robust defenses by delicately pushing the ball on to the defenders' foot.
That, after all, would have been against the spirit of attacking hockey which the Indians were famous for. Then comes the other scenario when India somehow earn penalty corners. Not being able to capitalising on them has been a perpetual worry for Indian coaches.
In recent years, Sandeep Singh was the one who seemed to give India a strategic option of creating penalty corners. But did this become part of strategy for India? Yes, it did - at least on the drawing board. Once on the field, the Indian players would care a damn about the discussed tactics.
The coaches are keen on change, but India are still not creating many penalty corners, which coach Terry Walsh says is due to the quality of rival defense. They've not been able to capitalise on all the penalty corners earned in four matches.
India did get one goal against Malaysia in an action that followed a penalty corner. But that was a sorry tale. The pushed ball had not been stopped on top of the circle. It got converted into a goal through a follow-up diagonal pass to the top of the circle, from where young striker Jasjit Singh Kular wounded the boards with a firm shot. Germany's fate in the current World Cup tells a story. Unable to convert a single penalty corner in the tournament, they are on the verge of failing to make the World Cup semifinal for the first time since 1971.
