India to face New Zealand today at Nelson, New Zealand

The India Men Hockey team will be seen facing New Zealand National Team Today in the ongoing New Zealand Tour. Having faced New Zealand A team in the first two matches wherein India registered convincing wins against them, but the real challenge starts now when the Indians will be facing the National host team at Nelson today.

Both the teams were seen last playing against each other during the Hero Hockey World league Final 2014 in New Delhi and it was the Black Sticks who managed to keep the game in their favour. It’s been more than a year now that both India and New Zealand played against each other and will be interesting to see how they fare against each other this time around. While New Zealand will have the edge in terms of playing in front of their home crowd, India with two wins in their kitty will be high on spirits and will aim to continue their form in the upcoming clashes.

The Indian team has already proved that they are hungry to win and they understand the value of the early goal. With this in mind the team will hope that they manage to sneak in the opponents D early and get the scorecard ticking. With SK Uthappa, Akashdeep Singh, SV Sunil leading the charge it will not be a surprise that they yet again pull off a stunner and get the team on a winning note.

Speaking on the game tomorrow, Roelant Oltmans Director, High Performance & India Men Chief Coach said, “The last two matches was good learning for us and in a way has got us familiar to the circumstances here. What is working in our favour are the field goals and which in a way showcases the team’s ability to break the defence chain to enter the opponents D and even our coordination during those few seconds. This is a good sign and I hope we continue this. Also from here we will aim to get more penalty corners and convert them.”

All games during the series will be LIVE streamed. More details about the live stream will be published on www.hockeynz.co.nz ahead of the series starting.

 The match will be played at 11.30 am IST.

 

source: http://hockeyindia.org