Hockey captain not content yet

Bangladesh national hockey team captain Rezaul Karim Babu said that their mission has not been completed yet with the Asian Games berth following a 3-1 win over Sri Lanka in their qualifying campaign in Bangkok yesterday.

"We feel really good as we confirmed the Asian Games berth but our mission has not been completed yet. We have just successfully completed the first step of our mission but our mission will be completed if we win the tournament," Babu told The Daily Star over phone. "We could not play according to our plan because of player-shortage due to card problems during the match. We had to play with 10 or nine players for 19 minutes. The weather and bumpy pitch were other reasons for not performing well," he added. The second successive win took the men in red and green to the semifinals of the nine-team qualifiers with a match in hand against Singapore, which will be played on May 12.

The charges of Iman Gobinathan Krishnamurthy initially some challenge from an ever-improving Sri Lanka team before Bangladesh took the lead in the 18th minute through Ashraful Islam's penalty corner and they doubled the margin in the 23rd minute, with Khorshedur Rahman converting a penalty stroke.

Sri Lanka pulled back a goal in the 44th minute to bring some excitement into the match before Bangladesh took the match away with Roman Sarkar scoring the team's third goals in the 53rd minute, keeping Bangladesh's nine-year winning run over the island nation intact.