Indian hockey team wins hockey pool A prelims against Hong Kong by 26-0
Indian hockey team wins hockey pool A prelims against Hong Kong by 26-0, here on Wednesday in the Asian Games 2018.
It has been raining goals in the hockey event of the 18th Asian games. After Indian women recorded its second biggest win over Kazakhstan (21-0)yesterday, it was the turn of the defending champions Indian men’s team to rewrite history with a record 26-0 win over Hong Kong China in its second pool B game on Wednesday.
With maximum six points from two games, India has already scored 43 goals without conceding any, creating in the process a record of sorts. Though a big win against Hong Kong China was a foregone conclusion, but the margin would run to its biggest ever win for India in any of the FIH supervised tournaments came as a pleasant surprise.
India has always been scoring big wins over Hong Kong in Asian Games. Thrice, India had beaten Hong Kong by an identical margin of 10-0. This time, however, it was almost a goal every second minute. Earlier, Hong Kong had lost to Korea 0-11 in its first match.
Eight of Indian players were among scorers. Drag flickers Harmanpreet Singh and Rupinder Pal Singh besides Lalit Kumar (four goals each), Akashdeep Singh (three), Manpreet Singh and Varun Kumar (two goals each), SV Sunil and Vivek Prasad (one goal each) were the scorers for India.
Interestingly, in two games, Indian skipper-cum-goalkeeper Sreejesh has not been put to test even once. Another redeeming feature of Indian wins so far has been that each its penalty corner strikers – Rupinder Pal Singh, Harmanpreet Singh and Varun Kumar -- have converted one or more penalty corners here.
Other than penalty corner goals, Indian forwards –Akashdeep, SV Sunil, Mandeep and Dilpreet – too have been among goals in the first two games. -PTC NEWS
