ACT Women's Hockey: India Look To Work On Finer Points Against Thailand

Buoyed by back-to-back victories in as many games, hosts India will look to work on the finer points of the game with an aim to thrash minnows Thailand in the women's Asian Champions Trophy in Rajgir on Thursday. Both India and reigning Olympic silver medallist China are unbeaten so far from two matches but the hosts have an inferior goal difference. China are atop the points table with a goal difference of 20, while India have a goal difference of five and a handsome victory on Thursday will only help their cause ahead of final two round robin matches against China and Japan.

Japan are placed third in the points table ahead of Korea. The top four sides from the round robin stage will qualify for the semifinals of the six-team continental tournament.

In both the matches India created plenty of scoring chances but failed to score the amount of goals they would have liked.

While India defeated Malaysia 4-0 in their tournament opener, they scored a late goal to eke out a narrow 3-2 win over South Korea.

The Indian players were guilty of rushing and faltered in choices once inside the opposition circle, a fact which chief coach Harendra Singh admitted.

"...we could have scored more goals. We were guilty of rushing and did not look for the right choices," Harendra said after Tuesday's match.

"We will watch clippings of the match and analyse where we went wrong and work on the finer points," he added.

Another factor which would be a cause of concern for Harendra is the team's poor penalty corner conversion rate.

Against Malaysia India secured as many as 11 penalty corners but utilised just three and that to from indirect attempts.

If that was not enough, India failed to make use of eight set pieces they managed to earn against