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What a pleasant experience for the Indian hockey team, who sailed through the tough match against South Korea. This was mainly due to the brilliant performance of our talented goalkeeper P.R. Sreejesh.
The crucial pool B match in the ongoing Asia Cup hockey tournament was played yesterday. This performance was particularly important for the team, as our versatile captain Sardar Singh had not yet fully recovered from his illness. Although Sardar still played, he was not at his best. The presence of Sardar itself was a major boost to the team, resulting in the 8-0 win over Oman as well as this 2-0 triumph over Korea.
The extraordinary performance given by Sreejesh is not only being applauded by fans, it also entitled him the Man of the Match award. Our worthy coach Roelant Oltmans has also shown his happiness over Sreejesh’s recent achievement.
His superb performance reminded us of similar excellent contributions from Bigan Soy, the goalkeeper of the junior women’s hockey team. Thanks to her extraordinary display, we could grab a bronze medal in the Junior World Hockey Championship, which was a matter of pride. Sreejesh also reminded us of Mir Ranjan Negi, a legendary goalkeeper who gave many such performances for India.
Sreejesh has shown an outstanding level of anticipation and accurate observation while keeping between the posts for team India. He saved as many as five to six possible goals, out of which at least two were saved thanks to his miraculously sharp reflexes. He has shown full commitment and dedication, playing in a pretty fearless manner. Sreejesh appears to be the best goalkeeper among all the eight teams participating in this tournament.
The match was a real close contest and the pace of the game remained the same during the entire match. Interestingly, despite being a very close contest, the first goal was scored in the 6th minute of the match and the last goal was scored during the last six minutes of the match. V.R. Raghunath and our favorite young striker Mandeep Singh scored the winning goals for team India. Mandeep is really the future of Indian hockey.
Though the Korean goalkeeper Ming Ho is also a very trusted and experienced one, the perfectly executed drag flick coming off the stick of Raghunath on the first penalty corner got past the keeper and crashed into the right corner of the goal.
Sreejesh has tremendous agility and a fearless approach. He has made some tremendous acrobatic saves which have helped the team in winning. I believe that he is going to prove to be a true asset for India in the long run. Sreejesh also has tremendous strength, which sharpens his natural abilities.
Now, over to the possibilities of winning this tournament. Undoubtedly, Pakistan appear to be a better team and they have already qualified for the last four. Though it is assumed that India will win its next encounter, in order to secure a berth in the upcoming World Cup next year, we desperately need to win this Asia Cup. By winning this event, we could possibly think of entry into the Olympics, a distant, but earnest dream of every Indian fan.
Meanwhile, much of our gratitude goes out to P.R. Sreejesh for saving the match and keeping us alive in the competition.
