KUALA LUMPUR: The Speedy Tigers need to learn to play at a faster speed against the top teams in the world, said national hockey team coach Arul Selvaraj.
Arul returned with the national team from India today from the World Cup where Malaysia finished joint 13th with France out of 16 teams.
Arul said the national team need to get used to playing under pressure in high-tempo matches.
Analogically, he said: "It's like driving a car 70 miles an hour or going to an F1 track doing 300 miles per hour. It's totally different."
"When you drive fast, you need to be alert with your decision-making, awareness... everything needs to be quicker. It's the same with hockey, we need to have a playing programme against the likes of Australia, Belgium and the Dutch (who are the top hockey nations).
"We need to encourage the players. They have improved... for the last one and a half years, I have been hard on them. We need to give them the belief," added Arul.
On the team's performance at the World Cup, he said: "A lot of things the players did well, and if we break it into quarters, we played 24 quarters in six matches and we played the 22 quarters well... we had a screw-up in the first two quarters against South Africa, it pushed us down.
"There's a lot of good things to take from here. We defended well in penalty corners and our runners did well. Our goalkeeping improved under coach S. Kumar."
Arul said former international S. Kuhan will be assigned to improve the national team's penalty corners conversions.
"Kuhan will come and help with the penalty corners. The penalty corners were not only our problem, it was a common issue in the World Cup because most teams worked on their defensive structure."
The national team's next assignment will be the Hangzhou Asian Games from Sept 23-Oct 8, which serves as a qualifier for the 2024 Paris Olympics.