It was a huge relief to get the first match out of the way and the 8-0 margin with which we beat Russia in the Olympic qualifying tournament here on Saturday was a big boost to our confidence as we prepare to take on Austria in the next match.

It’s important that we started off strongly. In the past, Indian teams always tended to stumble in the opening game and in that context, to come away with three points in the kitty was extremely satisfying.

I must confess that I was a bit anxious prior to the game, for, we had not seen much of Russia in the recent times. Of course, we used to play the Russians during the 1980s and they were then a tough team with close marking and physical play. From this perspective, I can say that we went in blind, with little data on our opponents, but once we got into our stride, we were up and running.

It took us about 10 minutes to assess our opposition and after Dilip Tirkey converted a penalty corner for our first goal, it was a fairly smooth going thereafter.

Prabhjot Singh was no doubt the star of the evening with his three-goal performance, but then, I never had any doubts over his ability as a striker. He has been playing well in the past one year and he scored some quality goals during our recent sojourn in Perth, where we played practice matches.

I did not put him in the starting XI because I wanted Raghunath, who these days plays on the left-wing, to force a few moves and get us penalty corners. We did get one penalty corner, but Raghu could not convert. I then replaced him with Prabhjot who went on to score three goals.

Our approach was to play attacking hockey with the intention of scoring as many goals as possible. To this end, we succeeded and overall, our performance was quite satisfactory. The other aspect of the game we have been working on is not to relax even if we were comfortably ahead.

Our new mantra is akhri dus minutes mein savadhaan rahenge. In other words, we will keep our calm in the final 10 minutes and avoid making silly mistakes or giving the ball away. (PTI)