India needs to be consistent, Oltmans says

June 04, 2013 05:25 pm | Updated 05:25 pm IST - New Delhi

Indian Hockey’s High Performance Director Roelant Oltmans on Tuesday said India needs to put up a “confident and consistent” performance to secure one of the three automatic World Cup berths up for grabs in the FIH World League Round 3.

“The men’s competition is really very tough but the players should be confident about their own abilities. And if we can show that confidence in a consistent basis, there is no reason why we shouldn’t qualify from here,” Oltmans told reporters in Delhi.

“I can assure you that we will fight our hearts out to be among the 3 top teams,” he added.

Three teams each will qualify directly for next year’s World Cup from the two World League Round 3 (semifinal) events. They will be joined by five continental champions and the host nation.

“Our focus should be to qualify directly either through World League Round 3 or Asia Cup,” Oltmans insisted.

Oltmans said the Rotterdam-bound Indian team is a fine mixture of youth and experience.

“In Akashdeep Singh and Mandeep Singh, we have some promising youngsters in our forward line while Shivendra (Singh) will lend experience to them,” he said.

“We also have best penalty corner specialists in the world in Sandeep (Singh), V.R. Raghunath and Rupinderpal Singh.”

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.