India face Yemen test

India tomorrow night face Yemen in their third and final international friendly at the Balewadi sports complex in Pune as part of their preparations for the 2011 AFC Asian Cup. After a loss against Hongkong in the first match, India displayed a much improved performance against Vietnam and deservingly walked away with a 3-1 win last Friday. And Bob Houghton not only will have been happy with the result, but also with the performance of his team.

Certain things are falling in place. Subrata Pal has been rock solid in goal in the five friendlies so far, in defence Gouramangi Singh has been the rock of Gibraltar at the heart of defence with mixed performances from Surkumar Singh and Anwar, while Syed Rahim Nabi has been doing a good job since moving in as left back. In midfield Anthony Pereira has been the highlight so far on the wings, be it on the left or his preferred right wing position. When playing Steven Dias was good, but is capable of more while Clifford Miranda was impressive in the last game. In the middle we have had mixed performances from Climax Lawrence and N.P. Pradeep, who haven't been able to recreate their Nehru Cup performances so far, while Mehrajuddin Wadoo and Baldeep Singh have done really well when forced to play in the first eleven. Upfront we miss Baichung Bhutia with Sunil Chhetri only showing his potential in the last game against Vietnam while Abhishek Yadav has taken a lot of load, but hasn't been getting the goals, while Mohammed Rafi and Sushil Kumar Singh still show the lack of international experience.

The match against Yemen is the last match before the team gets a break after three and a half months together, so hopefully we can expect another solid performance against the West Asians. After playing an East Asian (Hongkong) and Southeast Asian (Vietnam) side India will have to adjust to the different style of play which is prevailant in the Middle East.

In the current FIFA world rankings Yemen are 107th, 53 places above India but interestingly only a year back in the October 2009 rankings Yemen were ranked a place behind India as 139th and since then their rankings has sky-rocketed. In the recent West Asian Championships in Jordan the Yemenite team reached the semifinals only losing out to eventual champions Kuwait in a penalty shootout.

The last time the two sides met was in 2006 in the 2007 AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Yemen won 3-0 away in New Delhi in March 2006 and followed it up with a 2-1 win in Sana'a in November 2006, one of the first matches in charge for Bob Houghton, who played the match with a strengthened Under-23 team as preparations for the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.

The match will once more be live on television with Ten Action (formerly Zee Sports) showing the match from 19.00 IST onwards.