India dominated the possession, controlled the game, earned a bagful of chances and wasted them equally quickly to split points with Japan with a 1-1 draw on Friday in a game that raises more questions on its preparations ahead of the big-ticket Asian Games than ever.
It was a case of almost the entire team having an off day. The players kept entering the circle and kept hitting wide or over. They kept earning penalty corners — India had a total of 16 PCs through the match —- and were profligate enough to waste 15 of them. The first four were earned back-to-back in the 5th minute itself as India, hoping to go up early, went on an all-out attack. They kept pushing hard, barely allowing Japan any space to counter or mount any offence.
But the lack of cohesion and most of the players being off-position let the team down. The seniors in the forward line — Akashdeep Singh, Mandeep Singh, Gurjant Singh — repeatedly faltered. Vivek Sagar Prasad, Nilakanta Sharma and Sumit worked hard to keep the feeder lines open and even Varun Kumar and Jugraj Singh played upfront, but to no avail.
