India must gain against Spain!

India players celebrate a goal against Germany in the semi-finals at Kuala Lumpur recently

Coach CR Kumar has implored his players to improve their conversion in the Junior Hockey World Cup's bronze medal encounter against Spain on Saturday if they aspire for a place on the podium.

India wasted over a dozen penalty corners in their 1-4 semi-final defeat to Germany and cannot afford to repeat their mistakes against Spain, who gave them a convincing 5-1 drubbing in the preliminary league encounter. A couple of months ago, India had outplayed them 6-2 in a four-nation junior tournament at Dusseldorf.

‘Decision-making is key'

"The players need to make decisions on the pitch. Due to noise from the galleries, it is always difficult to hear the coaching instructions from the sidelines," said Kumar as the Indian team seeks to recompose themselves from the depressive 1-4 loss to Germany in the semi-finals. "Our finishing has let us down. We are not converting our chances. It's heart-breaking that we could not convert 13 penalty corners in that semi-final against Germany. But all those missed chances are history now. We have to give our best versus Spain in the bronze medal game," added Kumar.

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CR Kumar

India fell short of a medal when they finished fourth in the 2021 Junior World Cup at Bhubaneswar, after winning the gold medal in 2016 at Lucknow. India's earlier medals came in 1997 (silver) and 2001 (gold).

"Our short-passing game has been working against [the opposition's] man-to-man marking. The boys have tried their best to adapt to the game plan, but sometimes they tend to make wrong decisions," added Kumar.

Spanish coach Oriol Torras Puig still hasn't got over their 1-3 semi-final defeat to France.

Spain wary of aerial balls

"We need to recover mentally from our worst show of the tournament [against France]," he said.

Speaking about the upcoming bronze medal match, Puig added: "We will have to look out for India's use of aerial passes into the circle to create penalty corners," said Puig.