Indian women's team vice-captain Deepika Thakur laments missed chances vs Belgium

A file photo of Deepika Thakur (blue) in action

Indian women’s team vice-captain, Deepika Thakur lamented the missed chances in the hard-fought contest against the Belgians in their opening match of the Hockey World League (HWL) semis. India lost 1-0 to hosts Belgium, but they had a couple of chances to score and even had a shot cleared off the line.

The 28-year old said that they will use the experience of the loss in the upcoming matches.

She said, “The first match was a close-fought clash and we came close to scoring a goals on a few occasions. We have learnt a few things from the match and we will use the experience in the next matches.”

It was a dismal performance by the Indian side as they failed to get a hold of the ball while barely penetrating the Belgian circle when they had it. The Belgian defence stood tall for the entire match and didn’t give the Indian forwards any freedom to work their way through.

The Punjab-based player admitted that the team needs to work on keeping the ball better, having managed just 42% of the ball in their opening HWL match.

“The upcoming matches, we have to raise our level and be in better shape to face the challenges. We need to work on our ball possession as we failed to keep the ball in our side in the last match,” she said.

On the whole, the defender was satisfied with the performance and asked the team to have come back strongly in their next match – against New Zealand on 23^rd ?June.