Buoyant India up for Australia challenge

Ipoh (Malaysia): Buoyed by an impressive start, India will aim to take their performance up a notch against defending champions Australia in their third round-robin league encounter of the Sultan Azlan Shah hockey tournament here on Tuesday.

After being held to a 2-2 draw by Great Britain on the opener, India produced a better performance in the 3-0 victory over New Zealand, who had held world champions Australia to a 1-1 draw in their first fixture.

Using the tournament to fine-tune their squad after the induction of several youngsters, Australia gave an exhibition of their powerful game by outplaying hosts Malaysia 6-1 on Sunday.

The India-Australia encounter, featuring the two highest ranked teams in the six-nation competition, is billed as the marquee match of the preliminary league.

“We want to continue improving. That’s the objective we had before coming to Ipoh, but we surely want good results,” said India coach Roelant Oltmans.

He expressed satisfaction with the effort of his strikers in the second outing after a critical comment on their inability to create goal-bearing chances in the opening match.

“One of the most important things for me is finding the cohesion between the forwards and the midfield. We have now managed to do that,” said Oltmans.

“Our forwards played a different game against New Zealand compared to the first outing, but then it also has to do something with who’s the opponent,” he said.