Positive Indian girls beat strong Chinese in hockey

Displaying a rare sense of purpose and adopting an aggressive approach, India beat strong China 2-1 in the Asian Games women's hockey tou...

Displaying a rare sense of purpose and adopting an aggressive approach, India beat strong China 2-1 in the Asian Games women’s hockey tournament today.

The was the first of the three major hurdles — the other two being Korea and Japan — for the Indian girls in their quest for recapturing the glory they had achieved at New Delhi in 1982, when this event made its debut.

They got off to flying start handing out a 13-0 thrashing to hosts Thailand in their lung-opener on Tuesday. And today, they went from strength to strength to notch up a convincing win and shoot up to the top of the table with six points from two wins.

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There was never any sense of panic even when then Chinese were on the offensive in the initial stages of the match. The Indians led 1-0 at the breather thanks to a fine penalty corner conversion by skipper Pritam Rani Thakran.

Yang Haiping hit back the same way immediately on resumption to help China draw level. But 12 minutes from the end Manjinder Kaur put the issue beyond doubt.

The aggressive intentions of the two sides were clear right from the beginning as India’s Manjinder Kaur and China’s Chen Jing received green card treatment from Korean umpire Lee Keun-Ju within the first ten minutes.

Surinder Kaur sold a perfect dummy in the team’s third penalty corner and Pritam Rani took fine advantage of it to put india up.

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Immediately after the change of ends, China forced two more penalty corners — each side had eight in the match — and Yang Huiping came up with the equaliser.

The Indian pressure continued, and in a Chinese goalmouth melee in the 58th minute, while the custodian was advancing, Pritam Rani put the ball across to Manjinder Kaur, whose gentle push saw the ball roll in for the match winner.