A livid national hockey captain Sardar Singh said on Wednesday that Indian players need to work on their consitency sooner if they harbour any desire to be a potent force in the world circuit again.
India lost out on a golden chance to qualify for the next year’s World Cup in The Hague, Netherlands by finishing a lowly sixth in the just-concluded eight-nation World league Round 3.
“We didn’t start well in any of the matches. We played well for 5 minutes and then allowed the opposition to dominate us for the next 10 minutes. We were inconsistent throughout the tournament. We didn’t play total hockey for the entire 70 minutes in any of the matches,” Sardar said.
The skipper was also upset with sudden dip in form of the drag-flick specialists. “With Sandeep Singh, Rupinderpal Singh and V R Raghunath in the side, we were rated as one of the strongest outfits when it comes to conversion of drag-flicks but we failed to covert chances in Rotterdam. In every match, we got 5-6 penalty corners but failed to utilise them,” he said.
“The entire team is very upset with the performance because we were in high spirits going into the tournament. We all were confident of a good result. But we had a terrible start to the tournament. We needed to win the first game against Ireland but we surprisingly couldn’t although we were favourites coming into the match. It severely hurt us,” he said.