We can’t afford so many cards: Men's Hockey skipper Manpreet Singh

Manpreet Singh

Team India, looking to make amends for not being able to find a place on the podium four years ago, will be uneasy after their 4-4 draw against England which should have been a fairly straightforward win considering they were 4-1 up with 14 minutes to go. But suddenly the Indians started ‘losing' players.

India got three cards - Varun Kumar twice (one for five minutes in the first half and then for 10 minutes in the second half) and Gurjan Singh (10-minute suspension in the final quarter for dangerous play). With India down to nine men, the now 11 charged-up Englishmen got the upper hand.

Also Read: CWG 2022 Hockey: England rally late to force 4-4 draw with India

‘Good show overall'

England caught up at 4-4 with seven minutes left. India led for most part of the game, but when the final hooter sounded, they may well have felt lucky to have escaped with a draw and one point. The big lesson for Team India was on-field discipline. "The performance has been good overall so far. Even today, even after those cards, we showed a lot of teamwork and covered each other's mistakes. But we have to work on that [the suspensions]. We cannot have so many players spending so many minutes outside the field of play. We will have a discussion about this later today," skipper Manpreet Singh said.

India scored early with Lalit Upadhyay firing in a rebound off a penalty corner. Then Mandeep (13th and 22nd minutes) made it 3-0. Liam Ansell reduced the margin for England (42nd) before Harmanpreet Singh's penalty corner conversion made it 4-1. Then came the nightmare. Nick Bandurak (47th and 53rd) and Phil Rogers (51st) made it 4-4.

Women lose 1-3

Meanwhile, the Indian women's hockey team lost 1-3 to England in a Pool ‘A' match here yesterday.

Giselle Ansley (3rd minute), Tess Howard (40th) and Hannah Martin (53rd) scored for England, while Vandana Katariya (60th) scored the lone goal for India.