With a poor track record in the immediate past and no new faces to inject fresh ideas, the Indian team has quite a job on its hands in the men's hockey tournament at the 13th edition of the Asian Games starting here tomorrow.

Asian hockey is no longer an easy scene for one to dominate with the emergence of South Korea as a major power breaking the strangle hold enjoyed down the years by Pakistan and India, and, with its ability to spring a surprise or two, Malaysia is always there causing sleepless nights to the major players.

In the Utrecht World Cup in May this year, India went down 3-4 to Korea, with whom they are grouped here too, in a pool match and then crashed to a 1-4 defeat against Canada. India had lost to Korea in the play-off match of Atlanta Olympics also two years ago.

The seemingly never-ending tale of Indian Hockey reverses continued as Indiawent down 2-5 against Australia in the opening match in the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games two months ago.

They then lost 0-1 to Malaysia in the semi-finals before yielding to England in the play-off for the bronze medal. With no international exposure after that, the Indian Hockey Federation selectors had no recourse but to fall back on the tried and trusted players like Dhanraj Pillai, Mukesh Kumar in the forward line and Aashish Ballal and A B Subbaiah under the bar.

If India finish second in the tougher pool, where they are placed along with Korea, they are likely to run into Pakistan which has started getting its act together once again.

After finishing fifth in the World Cup, Pakistan failed to make it to the semi-finals in the Commonwealth Games because of its young and inexperienced team, but bounced back to finish runners up in the Champions Trophy last month.

The team, which is without Shahbaz Ahmed, Tahir Zaman and Mohd Shahbaz, has some fresh young blood like forwards Mohd Anees, AtifBashir, Mohd Sarwar and Sohail Abbas and half-back Mohd Usman.

The Koreans, who finished seventh in both the Atlanta Olympics and the World Cup, recovered from the slump with some impressive performances in the Lahore Champions Trophy.

Coached by Paul Lissek, Malaysia stunned a profligate India 1-0 in the Commonwealth Games semi-finals and is not a team to be taken lightly.

Coming back to the Indian team, it had a harrowing time on arrival and its movement to the village and checking in took as long as six hours due to some communication mess up.

It has also got over the worry about the fitness of Anil Aldrin who was suffering from herpes.

The team has been having regular practice sessions and also played a warm up match against Japan which it won 3-2.

The goals conceded, according to chief coach M K Kaushik, were due to the fact that the team did not want to take undue risks.

The Indian squad:

Goal Keepers: Aashish Ballal and A B Subbaiah; full- backs: Dilip Tirkey, Lazarus Barla andAnil Aldrin; half- backs: Ramandeep Singh, Thirumalvalavan, Baljit Saini and Sandeep Somesh; forwards: Mohd Riaz, Baljit Dhillon, L Prabhakaran, Samir Dad, Mukesh Kumar, Sabu Varkey and Dhanraj Pillay.