Hockey World Cup 2023: 'India did practice of playing with ten men' - Graham Reid after trumping Spain 2-0

On Friday, India's chief coach Graham Reid said his players ticked most of the boxes in the 2-0 win over a tricky Spain in their 2023 FIH Men's Hockey World Cup opener. He also praised the home team's defensive efforts to deny their opponents any chances.

"The boys were able to take the ball out of the goal. It was a good start. It is good to get the first game, and it is done now, and we will now focus on the next game. We did the practice of playing with ten men as we thought at some point in the tournament we are going to play with ten men," Reid said at the post-match press conference.

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"It was good. We got in front a lot today, and that was very important. We were first with the ball, which makes a lot of difference in these sorts of games. The defensive effort was pleasing today, and the second we handled the ball very well. There were not too many people who did not play well. That is what you need to win a World Cup. We need to continue it in the next game," added Reid.

India will play England in its second Pool D match on Sunday at the Birsa Munda Stadium. The Australian was also happy with the performance of both the goalkeepers, PR Sreejesh and Krishan Bahadur Pathak. "It is the way we have been playing. Both keepers have been playing extremely well, and I am thrilled. They are pushing each other. I want both of them to be life options if they are playing well, and something happens to one of them, and the other is slotted quite easily. There are a lot of positives," Reid said with a wry smile as the question related to Sreejesh, already one of the game's legends.

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Reid also hinted that the Indian side is on the road to achieving greater heights in future. "As a coach, I do a lot of things and try to fix problems, block holes and doing it over and over in the two years. But the problem is you never know which is the one to fix the problem, but I am a big mindset person, and many things we talked about tactically are fixed quite easily when you have a good mindset. There was tempo, there was turn which went right for the team," he continued.

"The great teams in the world make decisions on the pitch, and that is what ends up happening with me as a coach. It is like you are putting your kids out and letting them run and make mistakes, and we will fix them later. But, they also need to take responsibility. Harmanpreet [Singh] made a nice speech before during the shirt presentation and part of that is we have to cannon balls, each of us, and we showed a bit of it today. We need to keep building on that," reckoned Reid.

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Talking about a metaphor he had used earlier, Reid said, "On that Australian tour, we fired 15 bullets, and maybe, we have found a couple of cannon balls now." He was alluding to the number of goals India had scored (15) in that five-match series in which India competed for tooth and nail but lost 1-4.

(With inputs from PTI)