Hockey team beat Taipei

After going down 5-0 against Pakistan in their previous match, the Bangladesh national hockey team recorded a 3-1 win over Chinese Taipei in their second practice match in Malaysia yesterday, as the build-up to the AHF 9th Asia Cup continued in earnest.
The tournament begins today in the Malaysian town of Ipoh and Bangladesh will play their first match against South Korea tomorrow.
In yesterday's match, Krishna Kumar put Bangladesh ahead before Pushkor Khisha Mimo struck twice to give Bangladesh a 3-0 lead in the first half. Chinese Taipei pulled one goal back in the second half, which lasted only 25 minutes, 10 minutes less than scheduled time, to cater for practice matches for other participating teams.
Even though the margin of victory was not a convincing one against minnows Chinese Taipei, the win will nonetheless boost the players ahead of tomorrow's match, as the players are only getting to terms with the newly-laid blue turf and the yellow ball.
“The teamwork was pretty good and the players played better than the first match against Pakistan. I am happy with their performance even though the boys could execute only fifty percent of my instructions,” said Pakistani coach Naveed Alam over phone while attending the official dinner.
“Our target is to finish either fifth or sixth and I think we are on our way, especially after today's practice match,” said the former Pakistani Olympian.
However, the newly-installed blue turf and yellow ball may prove to be a hindrance to achieving the target for Bangladesh, who had their entire practice on the traditional green turf with white ball at home soil.
“We still have one day in hand and I think we will be able to adjust with the new turf and the yellow ball before our first match,” said goalkeeper Zahid Hossain, who also believed that the blue turf and yellow ball was one of the reasons behind Bangladesh's poor performance against Pakistan.