Roots of Aussie win lie in their defeat Down Under

It was a funny match in some senses, because both the teams attacked the same number of times. We started with four forwards and four halves. They played with the same number of attackers. But while their coordination was perfect — almost telepathic in its precision — none of our forwards knew what the other was doing.

Dhanraj played a good game on the left. I thought that the Australians allowed him some space deliberately. And I would have preferred him to play on the right. He would have done better there. But, irrespective of that, I think we lost the match in the Australian D. We just missed sitters, and they moved very fast on the counterattacks and scored at will.

One issue that irritates me is that we have beaten Holland, Germany and Australia in the recent past. And here, we have done badly against all three of them — lost two, won one in the last minute. Why is that happening? One reason could, of course, be that after they lost, they went back and analysed our game thoroughly and found holes. Whereas we must have just decided that if we can beat them once, we can beat them again. They analysed, we didn’t.

Our next match is against Argentina. And I think we will be terribly mistaken if we go out expecting an easy game like we did against Germany. Argentina are a skilful side, and very good at converting penalty corners. In fact, their whole game revolves around earning penalty corners. They also play an open game like the Australians do. I think we have to go all out right from the beginning and score as many goals as possible early on. Failing that, I don’t think there’s any hope. And we are running out of excuses.