Tokyo Olympics: India women's hockey team face litmus test against Great Britain

Tokyo [Japan], July 27 : The Indian women's hockey team put on a valiant performance against Germany in their Group Stage match on Monday at the Oi Hockey Stadium in Tokyo. The German side edged out India 2-0 in a closely fought contest. Team India will come up against defending Olympic gold medallists Great Britain in their third Pool A encounter.
Great Britain will be going into this game on the back of a 4 -1 win over South Africa in their previous match. India chief coach Sjoerd Marijne expressed that he noted positive signs of progress in India's performance against Germany.
Marijne said, "We played better yesterday than in our previous match. The quality of the play has to improve with each match, and that's what we are focussing on. It was unfortunate that we missed our penalty stroke at 1 - 0, but I'm happy that we had that stroke. We had many opportunities to score, which was a positive sign. We played with a lot of energy and were able to put pressure on Germany. We will now focus on recovery and making improvements for the next match."
Captain Rani acknowledged that India had a better outing against Germany than their first Group match, but stressed on the need to make further improvements for next match against Team Great Britain. "We created a lot of chances against a tough opponent like Germany and our defensive organisation was better than before. We know that we are on the right track and our time will come. We must show our strength of character as a team as this is a long competition and we still have matches left to play," said Rani.
Speaking about India's next match against Great Britain, Rani said, "We know they are the defending champions and they will be a tough opponent to compete against, but we want to focus on our good takeaways from our previous match and identify the areas where we still need to improve."