Video Editor: Vishal Kumar
They were favourites going into the match but no one thought they would end up making history!
Defending champions India defeated 45-ranked Hong Kong China 26-0 to register their second straight win in Pool A at the 18th Asian Games on Wednesday, 22 August. With this victory, India registered their highest-ever victory margin in the history of the Asian Games.
Hong-Kong China had little chance against a strong Indian defence that kept them from entering the striking circle, and yet again the Indian goalkeeper was rarely tested with no potential shots on goal taken by Hong-Kong China. The Indian attackers, meanwhile, ran riot, scoring insatiable goals at a heady pace.
India’s dragflick expert Rupinder Pal Singh scored maximum of five goals (3’, 5’, 30’, 45’, 60’) while his young compatriot Harmanpreet Singh scored four goals (29’, 52’, 53’, 55’). A hat-trick of goals were scored by striker Akashdeep Singh (2’, 32’, 35’) and Manpreet Singh (3’, 17’), Lalit Upadhyay (17’, 19’), Varun Kumar (23’, 30+) scored twice while SV Sunil (7’), Vivek Sagar Prasad (14’), Mandeep Singh (21’), Amit Rohidas (27’), Dilpreet Singh (48’), Chinglensana Singh Kangujam (51’), Simranjeet Singh (53’) and Surender Kumar (55’) too contributed to India’s scoreline. This performance took India’s total score in the tournament thus far to a marvellous 43 goals.
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India remained consistent with their goal-conversion rate with 42 percent as they scored 26 goals from 59 shots on goal. They made 38 field goal attempts to score 17 of them, while they won 21 PCs and scored 9 from it.
While scoring big wins against minnows like Indonesia and Hong-Kong China was a given, up next India face two potentially strong teams - Japan on Friday, 24 August, followed by Korea on 26 August 2018.
Said chief coach Harendra Singh:
We need to keep this momentum going into the next two matches where both teams will challenge the Indian attack and they are good with their counter attacks, so we must be very cautious with our defence too and not allow chances for counter attacks. We must play to our strength and be focused on getting past our first hurdle of making the Semi Final as Pool A topper.