England painted into a corner: Hockey

England 0 Germany

Christoph Bechmann, the Gladbacher striker, gave a strong German side the points in their opening game in the Golden Jubilee tournament in Karachi yesterday against a tired English team who had played less than 24 hours previously, writes Bill Colwill.

England again paid the penalty for their calculated risk of going into the event without the services of their talented penalty corner specialist, Calum Giles. For the second time in Karachi they failed to score from eight penalty corner awards.

England went behind in the 14th minute when Bechmann finished off good approach work by Bjorn Michel. Having survived a five-minute period with 10 men following the temporary suspension of Guy Fordham just before the interval, England had their best period of play during the first 10 minutes of the second half. In this time they forced four penalty corners - but to no avail.

Brett Garrard unnecessarily hitting the ball away by gave the Germans the first of two corners midway through the half with Bechmann scoring again from the second after a four-pass switch.

England looked much less sharp in yesterday's game than they had against Pakistan, which was not surprising after two games on successive days. They rest today before playing the Dutch Olympic champions on Wednesday.

ENGLAND: D Luckes (East Grinstead); A Humphrey (Cannock); J Wallis (Teddington), B Garrard (Guildford), G Fordham (Hounslow); B Sharpe (Cannock), J Pidcock (Cannock), J Lee (Old Loughtonians); B Crutchley (Cannock), R Garcia (HDM, capt), M Pearn (Reading). Substitutes used: D Hall (Guildford), B Waugh (Southgate), N Conway (Teddington), D Head (East Grinstead).

GERMANY: N Kowalszek; K Hollensteiner; C Mayerhofer, C Blunck, K Michler (capt), P Crone; B Michel, S Saliger, C Bechmann, C Eimer; O Domke. Substitutes used: P Streich, M Green, C Kurtz.

Umpires: J Gorisson (Neth), Rashid Khan (Pak).