Indians face music as Dutch change tune

In the end, the 50-minute domination came to naught and what mattered was the 20 minutes of the match, particularly the last eight minutes w...

In the end, the 50-minute domination came to naught and what mattered was the 20 minutes of the match, particularly the last eight minutes when the Indians were made to dance to the tune of the opposition. We started off well and everything was going according to plan till we got over-excited and started concentrating more on the referees.

But the Dutch coach’s master stroke of bringing star player Teun de Nooijer to the centre snatched the match away from us. The coach could see from the middle of the second half that the Indians were beginning to disintegrate and lose concentration.

Like any shrewd coach, the Dutch changed his strategy and shifted Nooijer to the middle. Along with that, his wingers started making a number of fake runs down the flanks. As expected, the Indian defence became totally confused and there were a number of openings for the Dutch to manoeuvre through. And as we saw, each time they tried they managed to penetrate the defence.

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We started off well and the scoreline was evidence of that. In fact, we played like a dream for the first 10 minutes of the match. Dhanraj Pillay was playing the role of a withdrawn forward to perfection and the defence was in perfect position.

If you ask me, I’ll tell you that our game was near flawless. Even after the first 10 minutes when the game opened up more, we held the upper hand.

But then, after taking the lead, we got a bit overawed by the occasion and unnecessarily got entangled with the referees.

I can tell you from experience that it never helps to offend the referees. We made him shaky, and he became adamant. He wouldn’t have changed his decisions anyway. And we lost our rhythm.

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I know the Indians would be lodging a formal protest and I think that’s the right spirit. We should have simply kept out focus going. Now they have to refocus on to Sunday’s match against the Germans.

The first 29 players of the German side are not playing. It shouldn’t be difficult to get past them. But we can’t afford to lose our concentration again.

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