Ten minutes was all it took Australia to blow the Indians off the Maj Dhyan Chand National Hockey Stadium and send them to the rare air found at the highest levels of world hockey.
The end result was a 2-5 scoreline and the Indians are still smarting about those ten minutes in which the Australians scored two goals. Strict clock watching indicates that the two goals came within seven minutes, but that is just a quibble. Mid-fielder Arjun Halappa said, "In the first ten minutes, Australia played real hard - we made small errors which cost us". His mate Vikram Pillai said the pressure created by the Australians and their ability to "press" the opposition until they ran out of oxygen, scattered the mid-field that and, "left space open for them to score goals… it was all in the starting ten minutes".
It was those ten minutes in which the Australians set a pace that the Indians found absent from their own speedometres. The lack of striker Shivendra Singh was felt both in the absence of his athletic ability at the goal mouth as well as the fact that his two-match suspension will leave the Indians one man short on the bench and one option less for the rolling substitution. It is, coach Jose Brasa believes, "the only thing to worry about" in the match against Spain.
Source : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/86398/Sports/Ind+vs+Aus:+Ten+minutes+that+shook+India.html
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