‘Great feeling to score winner against Pakistan’

Nikkin Thimmaiah.

Nikkin Thimmaiah may have scored only two goals in the Asian Champions Trophy, but he’s not exactly downbeat because one of them was the late winner over Pakistan in the final.

“Scoring the winning goal against Pakistan is a totally different feeling,” he said from Malaysia on Monday.

“It feels great. The coach (Roelant Oltmans) and the physio (Shrikant Iyengar) had told me I’d score. I told the physio I’d celebrate with him if that came true. I kept my word.”

The quality of some of the opposition may have been debatable, but Nikkin insisted that the Asian Champions Trophy was still an important tournament. “We hadn’t won this after 2011. Pakistan, Malaysia and South Korea are all good sides.

“So it was important for us to perform well here. We dominated the league stages and totally deserved to win this,” he said.

Could have played better

The 25-year-old from Virajpet admitted, though, that India could have played better in the final. “For a couple of minutes, we failed to stick to our game plan. In the third quarter, we were off balance for a bit.

“There was a lot of pressure from Pakistan. We had to hold the ball better. But in the fourth quarter, we bounced back and controlled the game,” he said.

India was without the services of S.V. Sunil, also from Karnataka, in attack. This meant that the other forwards had to shoulder extra responsibility up front. “He’s a great player. Unfortunately, he was injured and we missed him here,” Nikkin said.

“Ramandeep (Singh) was there with me. Akashdeep (Singh), Talwinder (Singh), Affan (Yousuf) and Lalit (Upadhyay) all did well. Ramandeep and I had to take the responsibility and we did that.

“We forwards spent a bit of time together at the hotel, and spoke about what we had to do on the field. That helped.”

Nikkin felt he had demonstrated improvement in his game at the ACT. “Before the Olympics, I did not match the standards I had set for myself,” he said.

“But I’ve been gradually improving since. In Rio de Janeiro and here, I was much better.

“My receiving was not good enough, nor was my running with the ball and my passing. I worked on all of those issues and got the results.”