Planning augured well for team: Baskaran

NEW DELHI, March 9: It took ten years for Indo-Pak hockey series to be revived. And no sooner had the Indian hockey team hit back strongly t...

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NEW DELHI, March 9: It took ten years for Indo-Pak hockey series to be revived. And no sooner had the Indian hockey team hit back strongly to square the series in the Pakistan leg, the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) secretary Col Mudassar Asgar’s rigid insistence that Pakistan were the winners of the Habib Bank Trophy on better goal average all but destroyed the camaraderie, between the players as well as officials on the two sides, that had been achieved in the week before that.

After the last match got over in Karachi, the announcer at the Hockey Club of Pakistan stadium announced, amidst loud cheering, that Pakistan had claimed the trophy. The basis: better goal average.

However, the Indian camp protested strongly against this decision, which lead to a heated discussion between the PHF secretary Col Mudassar Asgar and the Indian manager MM Somayya. Somayya insisted that since no such clause had been worked out before the start of the series, the trophy should be shared.

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Finally, the PHF agreed tothe sharing of the trophy, after the PHF president Akhter Rasool intervened. “Such issues should have been avoided, but the PHF secretary’s attitude was baffling. Anyway, we are happy that our stand was vindicated by Akhtar Rasool,” Jothikumaran explained. “How can you award a trophy midway through an eight-match series? Moreover, we had levelled the series. I believe they were trying to placate the crowd which was sore at the Pakistanis’ poor show, and had even resorted to stone throwing” he added.

But for that brief period of unpleasantness, the whole series was gone through in the right spirit. And what’s more it brought a lot of gains for Indian hockey. The Indian coach Vasudevan Baskaran expressed satisfaction with the Pakistan leg, but warned against complacency.

“There have been several gains from the tour, but we have to be cautious. There are still a few grey areas, which need weeding out before the World Cup. The Indian leg will be crucial for that,” the coach said.

He admitted that thepoor penalty corner conversion rate — two out of 33 on the tour had given the team some anxious moments. “We are not fast enough to execute the set-pieces. It will take some time. Besides, it was a new combination that was tried in Pakistan. Muhammed Riaz, Gavin Ferriera and Anil Aldrin the regular penalty corner experts — were not there. That did had have some bearing on our conversion rate,” Baskaran said.

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The other area where the Indians showed a deficiency was execution inside the circle. They dominated for long periods, but failed to get the goals after doing all the hard work. “I admit that Ahmed Alam, their goalkeeper was good. But the important point is `Can we beat him’? I would expect my forwards to get more goals; no goalkeeper is unbeatable,” Baskaran pointed out. Baskaran feels it is important for the Indians to stick to the same bunch of players, barring a few changes. “If we carry on this way, I don’t see why we cannot build a winning combination for the 2000 Olympics for that isour main goal now.”