The Indian women’s team captain Rani today said that her side would need to convert the penalty corners (PC) if it wants to win its semi-final match against Belarus in the Women’s Hockey World League Round 2.
Even though the Indian eves are managing to win the PCs, they are not so successful in converting them. In the game against Belarus in the league stage, they earned as many as five PCs but their lone goal came from a field goal.
“It is an area of concern for us. We have to convert PCs in the semifinal game and we are putting in extra minutes specifically for PCs in our practice sessions here,” she said.
Rani feels that her team also has to be inch-perfect in its man-to-man marking in order to get the better of Belarus.
“We are quite upbeat and confident of a good performance against Belarus. They are a strong unit and to beat them we need to be at our best in man-to-man marking and also work on our scoring especially PC conversions,” the striker said.
India had defeated Uruguay 4-2 via penalty shoot-out and Belarus 1-0 to top their Pool and make the cut, while Belarus defeated Canada 4-3 in the qualifier yesterday to earn their semifinal berth.
“We are very excited that we made the semifinals. We had clear goals before coming here that we must make it to the final and win it if we want to qualify for the Women’s Hockey World League Semi Final. I think it is a realistic goal and we are prepared for a good match tomorrow,” said Rani.
Though the Indian eves won both their matches in Pool A, Rani feels that they should have won their first game against Uruguay in regulation time itself.
“We should have played that match in a much better way. When we had our post-match team meeting, we agreed that we didn’t play to our potential and marked out the mistakes we made. We could have avoided a penalty shoot-out situation. But I feel we improved in the second game and didn’t make the same mistakes we did in our first outing,” she insisted.
India will take on Belarus on Sunday.
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