Coming off an excellent show at the elites’ meet of Champions Trophy 2016 in London earlier this month, the high-flying Indian team started their Invitational Six Nations Tournament campaign with a dispiriting 0-4 defeat against a commanding German outfit in Valencia on Monday.
Right from the outset, the Men in Blue seemed off-colour as they tried to squeeze out some possession at the centre but looked nowhere close to their confident selves of two weeks back. Germany’s attack wasn’t one to be suppressed by such an unconvincing unit as was proved in the very 5th minute by Mats Grambusch’s opening strike.
The German lead was doubled in the 10th minute by the same goalscorer, Grambusch. With one minute left in the first quarter of hockey, Moritz Furste capitalised on a German penalty corner and stretched the lead to that of three goals.
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An embarrassing outcome looming large over the Indians, the team looked sharper over the next two quarters and came close to reducing the deficit at times as well, but could not find a breakthrough. Some vapid exchange of control later, it was again a German penalty corner that saw Lukas Windfeder scoring the 4th for Germany to push the final score to 4-0 over India.
Speaking after the match, Chief Coach Roelant Oltmans said, “We’re not looking too hard at the result because several members of the team have been rotated. The performance though is something we will look at and analyse and better on in our subsequent games.”
Having done some reshuffling between his regulars and newcomers for today’s match, Oltmans would have certainly hoped for a better faring against the Germans who they will next face in their group fixture at the Rio Olympics 2016 in August. In their next match, India will take on Ireland at the same venue on Tuesday.
