India men lose to Netherlands 1-2 in their last build up match of European Tour

New Delhi: Indian Senior Men Hockey Team lost 1-2 to Netherlands in the last build up match played at the Hague, in The Netherlands today. This tour is in preparations for the FIH Men’s World Cup 2014, scheduled to be held at The Hague, Netherlands from 31 May -15 June 2014.

Indian team started off very well scored the first goal of the match in the 2nd minute of the match. Rupinder Pal Singh successfully converted a penalty corner and helped India to take a lead of 1-0. Indian team looked charged up from the beginning of the game and did not let Netherlands to score a single goal and maintained the lead 1-0 till the end of first half of the game.

Both the teams were playing very well and were defending the attack against each other. It was in the 46th minute Micro Pruyser scored the first goal for Netherlands through penalty corner to level the score to 1-1. With the help of this goal Netherlands gained momentum and their confidence grew up. They did not let Indian team to score any goals in the second half. Indian team were giving a tough fight to Netherlands but in the 67th minute, Tristan Alegra scored the second goal for Netherlands and ended the game with 1-2 on the scoreboard.

This preparatory tour was good experience for team India.

Results:

India 1 Rupinder Pal Singh (2 min)

Netherlands 2 - Micro Pruyser (46 min), Tristan Alegra (67 min)