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We failed to eliminate basic errors: Tirkey
Indian hockey captain Dilip Tirkey attributed the team's debacle in the recently concluded Olympic Games to their failure in eliminating common errors.
- Indo-Asian News Service
- Updated: February 25, 2007 09:08 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
Bhubaneswar:
Indian hockey captain Dilip Tirkey attributed the team's debacle in the recently concluded Athens Olympic Games to their failure in eliminating common errors. Tirkey also felt that they needed to concentrate more on the basics of the game in the upcoming series. "We have not been able to eliminate the common errors. We look forward to overcome them during the series against Pakistan," Tirkey said at a reception accorded to him by a group of sports lovers on Sunday. India finished a dismal seventh and failed to qualify for the Champions Trophy to be held in Pakistan later this year. Poor passing and trapping The defender said poor passing and trapping all through their Olympic campaign proved costly as these errors cost them dearly in crucial matches. "Although all the matches were important, the encounters against Australia and Holland were crucial. If we had obtained points from those two matches, things would have been different," he said. However, Tirkey said there was no readymade solution to such problems. "You have to watch the ball and concentrate on it while trapping," he observed. Asked whether it was complacency or psychological pressure at the fag end to which the team often succumbed to, Tirkey said a team could not afford to be complacent at this level of the game and needed to hold nerves till the end. The team, which fumbled even for a fraction of a second had to pay the price, he said. The Indian captain also denied that there was any rift or groupism in the team and said they always played as a unit. Asked in which segment of the game the team had improved, he said they did well in the defence and midfield also improved because of players like Viren Rasquinah and Vikram Pillay. (PTI)Topics mentioned in this article
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