Hockey World Cup 2018, India vs Belgium: 5 Talking Points

#4 India squander chances to make a comeback in the first half

India squandered early chances to make a comeback in the first half

Another issue that concerned the home crowd for a while was the way India played throughout the first half.

Having conceded a goal within the first quarter of the match, it didn't look for a while as if this was the same Indian team that had pummeled South Africa with ease in the opening match.

For the whole first half, the team struggled to hit the ball right, forget even making an attempt to penetrate the circle and go for the equalizer.

From Mandeep Singh's royal miss to lack of coordination between forwards Dilpreet Singh and Lalit Upadhyay, everything seemed to go wrong for Team India throughout the first half.

Interestingly, if one looks at the statistics, they'd find that India struggled throughout the first half.

As compared to Belgium's six circle penetrations, India could make only two such penetrations.

Even the pass accuracy between Indian players was approximately 57.5%, much lesser than that of Belgium, who had an accuracy of over 66% in both the quarters of the first half.