Not making excuses, but the umpiring’s been a bit dodgy

It worked. We scored the first goal, even if the lead could not be retained for too long. Even so, I thought the first half belonged to us.

The pace of the game picked up in the second half. Once we conceded a lead and went down 1-2, the pressure came on us. In the circumstances, our fight back was brilliant. To equalise from a 1-3 situation is never easy, more so when you’re playing Australia.

With less than 10 minutes to go, the Dhanraj Pillay incident shook us. He was shown a yellow card when he had done nothing wrong and deserved, at worst, a green card. I don’t want to make an issue of the umpiring — it would sound like an excuse in the face of defeat — but the systematic targeting of our most dangerous players at crucial stages is getting a bit much.

I don’t intend to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but there is definitely something amiss here. When European or Australian teams play it rough, we are told it is ‘part of the game’. When it comes to the Indians, impossible standards are set and yellow cards whipped out with alarming frequency.

If we had drawn this match, we could have advanced to the semi-final on the basis of our own performance. Now we will be dependent on not just our victories in the remaining games — against New Zealand and Argentina — but also freak results in other matches. It will be a time for the calculator, not the best thing in sport.

William Xalco’s thumb injury won’t help our cause either. The fracture will keep him off the field for four to six weeks.

Yet there are some silver linings to this dark cloud. We have improvised and innovated successfully in this tournament. Whether it is in fighting back after conceding a quick goal or in addressing the problem of giving away early goals itself, we have learnt from match to match.

Since the proof of the pudding is in numbers, mull on this one. We have conceded 19 penalty corners in three matches. Only two were converted. Believe me, we’re on the upward curve; and yet we’ve only one victory to show for it.