After confirming a spot within the semi-finals, defending champions India will look to proceed their profitable streak after they tackle Japan within the ultimate spherical robin match of the Asian Champions Trophy males’s hockey match right here on Sunday.
After a gradual begin to the match, Olympic bronze medalist India returned to the five-team match with two consecutive wins.
Playing their first match after a historic Olympic marketing campaign, India had been held to a 2–2 draw by Korea of their opening match. However, the gamers upped their recreation by leaps and bounds to crush hosts Bangladesh 9-0 after which beat arch-rivals Pakistan 3-1 on Friday.
India are at present main Korea (5), Japan (2) and Pakistan (1) with seven factors from three matches.
Hosts Bangladesh are but to make their presence felt within the scoresheet after dropping each their matches.
Coming in because the clear favorites within the match, the Indians had been the higher facet amongst all different groups, simply on the premise of kind and world standings.
Having mentioned this, India had been gradual to interrupt out of the block as they squandered the benefit of a two-goal go to Korea.
The match towards Korea was sort of a wake-up name for the Indians. They appeared utterly completely different towards Bangladesh, dominating your complete 70 minutes of the competition with their superior performances.
The match towards neighbors Pakistan was anticipated to be an in depth match and that’s what occurred within the final two quarters.
India had been in full management within the first two quarters as they took the lead within the eighth minute earlier than doubling their lead within the forty second minute.
India’s dominance could be gauged from the truth that Pakistan failed to attain a single shot on aim within the first two quarters, not to mention a penalty nook.
The encounter intensified after the change of finish as Pakistan got here out with extra goal and gave India a run for his or her cash within the ultimate quarter-hour.
But the Indians didn’t enable any infiltration to the Pakistanis as a greater defensive and offensive efficiency helped them to come back out on high.
The Indian forward-line has been in spectacular kind with the likes of Lalit Upadhyay, Akashdeep Singh and Dilpreet Singh on the music.
The midfield is put collectively by skipper Manpreet Singh whereas the duty of the backline rests on the shoulders of vice-captain Harmanpreet Singh.
Indeed, India’s younger custodian Suraj Karkera carried out brilliantly below the goalpost and denied Pakistan the lead on a number of events on Friday.
As per the outcomes of the latest conferences, India has an edge over Japan, who defeated them 5-3 of their final assembly on the Tokyo Olympics.
But data and rankings hardly matter in worldwide hockey as a result of a nasty day on the workplace can all the time spoil all of the earlier laborious work.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
