The Indian women’s hockey team celebrates after scoring against Italy.© HI
The Indian women’s hockey team on Tuesday routed Italy 5-1 to enter the semifinals of the FIH Olympic Qualifiers here, but chief coach Janneke Schopman feels that the scoreline might not depict how tough it was out there in the middle. India finished second in Pool B behind USA and will now take on Pool A toppers Germany in the semifinals on Thursday. The top three sides from the tournament will qualify for Paris Olympics. “We have learnt from every match. In the first match, we didn’t really play well. Our second game was really good and we were in control. This game against was a bit difficult, we struggled a little bit,” Schopman said after the match.
“The learning from here is that we actually fought ourselves back into this game and started dominating.
“Italy is difficult team to play against, they are very skillfull, play hard. So lot’s of learnings,” the Dutch added.
Schopman had words of praise for Udita Duhan, who scored a brace on her 100th international match on Tuesday.
“Deepika was not in the field for most of the PCs, so Udita was a good option.” “Deepika has a good drag-flick, she is flicking really good in training. The one time she was to flick we miss-trapped the ball. There was huge pressure on that stroke (penalty stroke). We were just 1-0 up.” Schopman said that at one point she wasn’t impressed in the manner the team was playing.
This game is difficult to play. We know everyone is talking about goals and in the end, we need to play hockey but we weren’t really playing well in the first two quarters. We fought ourselves back in the game.” The coach she doesn’t have any plans to change Udita’s style of taking penalty corners.
“She (Udita) feels good about slapping so I have no problem. Udita just has the slap and she is very dangerous. She has a good mindset also, she executes her skills pretty well and I am happy with that.” Schopman said the ongoing tournament is very stressful for every team.
“We need two finals to qualify. People don’t know but this tournament is very stressful because everyone wanted to be in the top four and have a chance to go to Paris. Even Italy had a chance today when New Zealand lost to US. They knew if they win they can qualify,” she said.
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