After confirming a place in the semi-finals, defending champions India will look to continue their winning streak when they take on Japan in the final round robin match of the Asian Champions Trophy men’s hockey tournament here on Sunday. After a slow start to the tournament, Olympic bronze medalist India returned to the five-team tournament with two consecutive wins. Playing their first tournament after a historic Olympic campaign, India were held to a 2–2 draw by Korea in their opening match. However, the players upped their game by leaps and bounds to crush hosts Bangladesh 9-0 and then beat arch-rivals Pakistan 3-1 on Friday.
India are currently leading Korea (5), Japan (2) and Pakistan (1) with seven points from three matches.
Hosts Bangladesh are yet to make their presence felt in the scoresheet after losing both their matches.
Coming in as the clear favorites in the tournament, the Indians were the better side among all other teams, just on the basis of form and world standings.
Having said this, India were slow to break out of the block as they squandered the advantage of a two-goal pass to Korea.
The match against Korea was kind of a wake-up call for the Indians. They looked completely different against Bangladesh, dominating the entire 70 minutes of the contest with their superior performances.
The match against neighbors Pakistan was expected to be a close match and that is what happened in the last two quarters.
India were in complete control in the first two quarters as they took the lead in the eighth minute before doubling their lead in the 42nd minute.
India’s dominance can be gauged from the fact that Pakistan failed to score a single shot on goal in the first two quarters, let alone a penalty corner.
The encounter intensified after the change of end as Pakistan came out with more objective and gave India a run for their money in the final 15 minutes.
But the Indians did not allow any infiltration to the Pakistanis as a better defensive and offensive performance helped them to come out on top.
The Indian forward-line has been in impressive form with the likes of Lalit Upadhyay, Akashdeep Singh and Dilpreet Singh on the song.
The midfield is put together by skipper Manpreet Singh while the responsibility of the backline rests on the shoulders of vice-captain Harmanpreet Singh.
Indeed, India’s young custodian Suraj Karkera performed brilliantly under the goalpost and denied Pakistan the lead on several occasions on Friday.
As per the results of the recent meetings, India has an edge over Japan, who defeated them 5-3 in their last meeting at the Tokyo Olympics.
But records and rankings hardly matter in international hockey because a bad day at the office can always spoil all the previous hard work.
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