Malaysia’s tall order to meet semis target

MALAYSIA must beat defending champions Japan in the quarterfinals today to meet their top four target in the women’s Hockey Asia Cup in Kakamigahara.

For the record, Malaysia have only reached the semi-finals once in the inaugural Asia Cup edition in 1985 in Seoul. The team finished fifth in the last three editions.

National coach K. Dhamaraj believes luck will be on his side today.

“Japan do not have a potent penalty corner flicker like China, India and South Korea, but they have a good hitter. The World No 11 rely on set-pieces to score goals from penalty corners,” Dhamaraj told Media Hockey WhatsApp group yesterday.

“Japan are fast, hard working and play a high pressure game to disorientate their opponents. We need to be cautious when they are pressing as most of their goals come from this strategy.

“We need to find a solution and work around their pressing game to catch them and score goals. Our forwards may not have scored many field goals, but they are good in earning penalty corners.

“It is important that we make our penalty corners count as not many will come our way tomorrow.”

In the group stage, World No 22 Malaysia scored only two goals from 15 penalty corner attempts in the 8-0 win over Singapore, and netted two times from four attempts in the 5-4 defeat to China.

Dhamaraj’s side failed to score from five penalty corners in the 2-0 defeat to India.

The winners of the match between Japan and Malaysia will face India or Kazakhstan in the semi-finals.

China take on Thailand while South Korea play Singapore in other quarter-final matches today. Ajitpal Singh