Whoever blinks first will lose advantage
Indian Express — February 5, 2003

This is the first International match of the three Test series we are going to play after the  Azlan Shah Hockey tournament held in Kuala Lumpur, where we had gone without several of our  senior players. Instead, we’d taken members of the junior national team. 

The experiment was basically to see the potential in the new players and, with the injury to Jugraj Singh, we wanted to build a strong reserve bench. 

For the coming Test series against Holland, we have recalled Gagan Ajit Singh, Prabhjot Singh,  Devesh Chauhan and Dilip Tirkey — the latter is also the captain of the side. We have also  retained 7-8 players who played at the Azlan Shah tournament like goalkeeper Kamaldeep, full  backs Harpal and Xalxo and half backs Ignacius Tirkey and Vikram Pillay. This is a very good side  with lots of potential. 

Although Dhanraj Pillay is a player of immense importance to our side, we have some very good  forwards like Gagan Ajit, Prabhjot and Baljit Singh Dhillon, who have proved their metal in the  past and scored goals for us. 

This three Test series between India and Holland is of immense importance for both teams, as both  will be competing at the Olympic Qualifiers in Madrid next month. There is no better way to know  the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents than to play against them. While we will be very  eager to learn the variations of how the Dutch take their penalty corners, they in turn will try  to pick up a few tricks of our skills. 

Playing such quality European teams at the international level will help us learn a lot and  improve our standard of play. 

Teams like Holland are very good at set play — good passing and positioning — and always producing top-quality penalty corner experts. This side already has quite a few top-class players  and someone like Taekema will always be very dangerous. 

India, too, has players like Dilip, Baljit Dhillon and Len Aiyyappa who are adept at taking drag  flicks. Dilip, though, is more of a hitter. 

We played Holland last at the Champions Trophy where we lost 3-4 and are playing them after about  5 months. They have come here to play a series after almost 20 years and in my view should not  have any problem adopting to the conditions here in Hyderabad as the climate here is nice and  cool and the first two matches will be played under lights. 

The first match will not be very easy for either team to win. We must not make many mistakes in  the defence and should avoid giving away penalty corners. The teams which commits fewer mistakes  will win.