New Delhi: Indian men got a flying start to their 'Road To London' campaign as they thrashed Singapore 15-1 in their opening of the Olympics Hockey Qualifiers at the Dhyanchand National Stadium here o Saturday.
India was right on target from the moment the referee blew the whistle. Yuvraj Walmiki got the first opportunity to open the scorecard but he missed it in the 9th minute and then again in the 10th minute. Soon after the miss Gurvinder Singh Chandi with a clean strike put India ahead of the visitors. That opened the flood gates and Sardar Singh soon opened his account with a super hit in the 11th minute.
The visitors were not satisfied with their 2-0 lead and continued to press hard, that resulted in the third goal from Shivendra Singh in the 18th minute. They created two more opportunities in the 20th minute but both the times Yuvraj Walmiki failed to score.
In the 21st minute Chandi got his second goal but this time he was helped by Singapore's Ismail Mohamed Ishak who guided the ball in his own goal. The game never stopped at that as in the 25th minute India got their second penalty corner. VR Raghunath’s shot was stopped but the ball went to the ever alert Danish Mujtaba and he did not disappoint.
In just four more minutes Shivendra registered his name for the second time when he hit the plank from a pass from S K Uthappa in the 29th minute and India got to a lead of 6-0. The first half ended on that score and things were looking ominous for the visiting team in the second half.
Second half started with much anticipation mostly from the Indian fans present at the stadium. The opening few minutes went unharmed for the visitors but it was the 40th minute that the Singapore team will like to remember from this match. Maybe that was the only minute that belonged to the young side as they opened their account by a clean shot from Abdul Lathif. His task was made easy by the Indian defence as no one was back to help Bharat Chetri in their spree of scoring goals.
The Indians didn’t even give the chance to the visitors to celebrate as they scored their 7th goal in the next minute. And with that goal Chandi completed his hat-trick in the match.
Tushar Khandker also had his name in the list of the goal scorers. India failed to convert their four previous short corners but they changed the record in the 5th opportunity that they got. Sandeep Singh found the top right corner with a clean strike in the 48th minute.
Uthappa put India score into double digits in the 48th minute. Danish got his second goal in the 52nd minute. In the next two minutes India saw two more goals, one each from Yuvraj and Sunil. Sunil soon made the score 14-1 in the 57th minute.
India in the last minute scored their 15th and this time it was the midfielder Birendra Lakra who found the plank.
After the match Indian coach Michael Nobbs said, “We still have the scope of improvement. We were playing attacking hockey and will continue to do that. We are not going to give any team any respite, we will be ruthless.”
Indian vice-captain Sardar Singh said, “We did quite well. Still there are some areas that we have to work on. We got 6 penalty corners and we converted only one. We have to work on our defence as well.”
By Gaurav Jha
Indian Sports News
