Harpal Singh Bedi
India hockey captain and ace drag flicker Harmanpreet Singh on Friday exuded confidence of his team continuing with its winning spree when they take on Pakistan at the Asian Games in Hangzhou on Saturday.
Talking about the match against Pakistan, Harmanpreet said that the team has learned valuable lessons from their matches thus far in the tournament, which will come in handy against Pakistan.
“It has been a good start for us in the tournament so far, but the most important aspect so far is that with each opponent, we have learnt new things about our gameplay and about how we can improve our game. We have remained unbeaten, which gives us confidence going into our game against Pakistan that we are in good shape and rhythm, and now it is just about maintaining the momentum and implementing the lessons that we are learning every day,” .
“There is always excitement in the dressing room whenever there is a match against Pakistan. The fans are always the loudest and make their voices heard. Pakistan has a solid team that has been doing really well, so we know we also have to be at our best against them to get a win. We are motivated by the results so far and we are eager to maintain our winning streak in the tournament,” he said.
Chief Coach Craig Fulton said, “We have shown some tremendous progress in the first three games and we are happy with our performance. Of course, there are always some improvements that can be made, and it will be critical that we work on those ahead of the match against a strong team like Pakistan, which is also having a good tournament. We know what our goals are and are confident that we will achieve them on Saturday.”
India opened the contest with a 16-0 win over Uzbekistan ,followed it up with a 16-1 win over Singapore. On Thursday, India faced their toughest challenge of the campaign against the 2018 Asian Games Gold medalist Japan and came out of the contest with a 4-2 win to keep their winning streak intact
Pakistan , is also having a good run, having won all three games they have played so far. Pakistan began their campaign with an 11-0 win over Singapore and then went on to record a 5-2 win over Bangladesh and an 18-2 win over Uzbekistan.