By Tony Mariadass
Japan were not in the same class as India, but it was a crucial 3-1 win for Malaysia at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium in Chennai this evening, to book a place in the last four for the knockout stage.
Malaysia the five-time bronze medallist, scored through Najmi Jazlan (13th minute), Hasan Azuan (37) and Silverius Shello (59), while Niwa Takuma (59) scored the lone consolation for Japan in the penultimate minute of the match, as Malaysia went to top the points table with three wins and one defeat in four games in the six-team round-robin competition.
Japan suffered their second defeat after two successive draws, 3-3 against former champions Pakistan and 1-1 against hosts India. They had started the event with a 1-2 defeat to another former champion Korea. Japan, who have only two points from four matches, are out of contention for a place in the knockout stage as they have only one match against bottom-placed China remaining in the event.
“Our concern today was to win against Japan and be on track in the competition. We did just that,” said national hockey coach Arul Anthoni Selvaraj to Apa Khabar after the match.
“After our defeat to India (0-5), we did not speak about the match as we played Japan the very next day and we just wanted to concentrate on recovering for the match against Japan and winning.
“We had much better ball movement, were more composed especially in the circle against Japan. Although Japan were not as fast opponents or controlled as India, we still did our job to be the best of our ability.
“Now that we have a day off before we play our final game against Korea, we will talk about the game against India tomorrow and analyse it to learn from the game and work on how we can improve.
“It was great learning experience game for us against India and look forward to playing them and teams like Belgium in the near future, in our process to improve further.”
Against Korea on Wednesday, Arul said the team is looking forward to playing them and need to keep to their game plan and execute it well with perfection and consistency.
“We have had a good tour in Korea recently and are confident to play them. Of course they are good in their counter attacks, over head balls and penalty corners, but we have a good chance against them and must make the best use of our chances created.”
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