Harmanpreet: 'Not going to overthink' reliance on penalty corners after India beat Wales 3-1 in Amstelveen
India defeated Wales 3-1 in a World Cup match in Amstelveen on Saturday, with captain Harmanpreet Singh scoring twice and Sanjay Rana adding the other goal.
All three Indian goals came from short corners, a pattern that has prompted debate about the team’s dependence on penalty corners and drew a wry smile from Harmanpreet when the topic was raised; the skipper has been asked similar questions many times in his career. The link-up between Mandeep Singh, Abhishek Nain and Sukhjeet Singh, the report noted, lacked the final pass, control or finishing touch in the match against Wales, but Harmanpreet defended the forwards and their chance creation, saying: “They are playing well. They are creating so many chances in the D, so it doesn’t matter if we are scoring a field goal or creating a PC. At the end of the day, we are getting goals, that’s more important,” said the 30-year-old.
Harmanpreet’s brace took his international goal tally to 254. The article records that 217 of those 254 goals, or 85.43%, have come from penalty corners, underlining the volume of his scoring from set plays.
The report also states that India wins 69% of matches when Harmanpreet scores, and it links India’s attacking fortunes to his conversion form; when his penalty-corner conversion dipped during a stop-start Pro League campaign, India finished eighth in the standings.
In the Pro League segment cited, Harmanpreet featured in 10 games during which the team converted nine of its 43 penalty corners, with Harmanpreet himself managing two conversions. Across 16 Pro League games, the piece described India’s overall poor PC conversion and struggles from open play as factors that produced a sub-par number of short corners earned.
The distribution of penalty corners in that Pro League campaign was uneven: of India’s 63 PCs, 24 came in the two matches against last-placed Pakistan, while in 14 games versus top-seven teams India converted just eight of 39 short corners. The report adds that India scored more field goals (16) than PC goals (13) in the Pro League, but six of those field goals came against Pakistan.
Harmanpreet declined to dwell on past form and reiterated the team’s objective for the tournament, saying: “We are not going to overthink things. We know our values and targets. We are here for the World Cup, we are going to win this,” he said.