After flattering wins on the opening day yesterday, India men and women (under-18) teams continued their winning spree in the Youth Olympic Games Hockey Qualifier Tournament in Bangkok on Thursday. While women team recorded an impressive 10-0 win over Korea, Indian men team struggled hard to defeat Japan 6-2.
The India-Japan game witnessed some robust hockey in a fierce contest as both teams had a green card each. India, suffered a reverse, when it got its first yellow card reducing its playing strength to four in the third and last segment.
Japan after conceding 0-4 lead in the first segment came back strongly and matched Indians in almost every department of the goal. Besides defending their goal stoically, the Japanese also managed to reduce the margin in the second segment at the end of which India could extend its lead to 6-1. In the third and final segment when India got a green and yellow card, it was Japan, that scored the only goal to make the score 2-6.
India continues to head pool "A" with four wins from as many matches with a goal difference of 29 goals. Today skipper Vivek Parsad (two), Rahul K. Rajbhar (two), Maninder Singh (0ne) and Moirangthem Rabichandra (1) were the scorers for India while Kazumasa Matsumoto and Nakahana Jun were the scorers for Japan.
In the women's section, India enjoyed complete supremacy over their rivals Korea for its second successive win . Sangita Kumari (four), Lalremsiana (three), Mumtaz Khan (two) and Deepika were the scorers for India. Indian women also head the table with maximum six points from two
games.in Pool "B".
