Happy with result, not performance

Bangladesh Under-18 earned four penalty corners in their opening U-18 Asia Cup Hockey game against India among which they successfully converted four of them to clinch a vital victory. The conversion rate of penalty corners against Oman in the second game was also great as Ashraful Islam found the back of the net three times in four attempts. Thursday though was a bit different for the Bangladesh youngsters when they played against Chinese Taipei. Although Bangladesh won with relative ease by a margin of 6-1, they could have put five or six more goals past their opponents had they utilised their chances like the previous two matches. They received 11 penalty corners and managed to convert only five. Bangladesh U-18 team manager Kawser Ali, head coach Zahid Hossain Raju, captain Romman Sarkar and the other players were all happy to win the game and reach the final for the first time in their history, but not satisfied with the performance. "Not disappointed but there were some things which the players looked confused with. We couldn't perform the way we wanted to play," said Kawser. He continued, "We concentrated more on attacking, which in turn saw our defence collapse on some occasions. Another thing is that we allowed them to make many overhead passes in the first half which cost us some time." On the other hand, Raju went as far as to term it a “bad day”! "It's a bad day for us. We couldn't perform up to the expectation. Building up combination and going forward together were absent. Stopping and tackling were not good enough. [Thursday's] semi-final was hard. Hopefully, it will bring good fortune for [Friday's] final," said Raju. "The most important thing is to win the game and I'm very happy we reached the final. But the way we played [Thursday], it did not appear that Bangladesh were playing. We are better than this." he added.