India vs China Women’s Hockey Asia Cup 2025 Final Highlights: China lift Asia Cup with stunning second half performance; IND 1-4 CHN

For the second week running, the best hockey team of the continent won the Asia Cup title. In Rajgir, it was the Indian men, who have won back-to-back bronze medals at the Olympics, reiterating their status as the best Asian team for the better part of the last decade. On Sunday in Hangzhou, it was the Chinese women who served a reminder that their stunning silver medal run at the Paris Olympics was no fluke. India would be on the receiving end as Harendra Singh’s side went down 1-4 in the Women’s Asia Cup final against Alyson Annan’s well-oiled machine. The former Aussie legend has now overseen China’s Asia Games gold, Paris 2024 silver, and this Asia Cup triumph, which guarantees them an automatic slot at next year’s Hockey World Cup where, without a doubt, they will be medal contenders again.

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And that's that. The hooter goes. Alyson Annan has done it again, the head coach is all smiles.

China: Asian Games champions, Paris Olympics silver medallists, Asia Cup winners.

BICHU SAVES! The goalkeeper does well to keep it to 1-4. Chen Yi is 1v1 with the keeper and she closes the angle down quickly.

Five minutes is a long time in hockey but this arguably well beyond India now, given China have conceded 2 goals all tournament.

FAN Yunxia scores! Chen Yang has a brilliant match, plays a lovely aerial down the right flank and it is controlled superbly by Yunxia, who drives into the circle, drops her shoulder to beat Ishika and unleashes a reverse hit pass Bichu.

India are unravelling here. They do want to review this and there is no clear reason to change the decision.

China now enjoying a spell of possession but not too threatening.

Rutuja does well to drive forward from midfield but she had little support and couldn't keep the ball.

End of Q3: India 1-2 China

Mihir Vasavda: That balance though.. between defence / attack. Still time though.

GOAL CHINA! WOW WHAT A COUNTERATTACK!

India played a good variaion from the PC actually, Navneet touching the ball back to Udita, whose low slap caused havoc in the Chinese circle. Salima had a couple of gos at it but China win the free hit. They go forward IN LIGHTNING QUICK fashion and Li Hong runs all the way into the circle and unleashes a fierce reverse hit across goal to beat Bichu.

Now it is sustained China pressure for a couple of minutes that finally subsides after a stray pass down the left channel. Bichu had to make a sharp intervention a few moments before that.

This is probably India's best spell in possession, they are not just keeping the ball but asking questions of the Chinese defence. The threat eventually dies down as Navneet's pass is too hard for Jyoti to control.

Oh Jyoti and Sharmila combine well down the right for another circle entry but the cross into the danger area is just outside Rutuja's reach.

A brief break in play as Rutuja is bundled over by a Chinese player. India not happy with some of the physicality that China are showing.

HALF TIME: India 1-1 China

A breathless first half comes to a close with China finding the equaliser in Q2 after some relentless pressure.

FAN Yunxia now drives forward down the middle but Udita does well to put in a tackle an wins the free hit as well.

India should see this half out now.

A couple of crucial late interventions from India in deep defence, first from Siami and then from Nikki and India break forward. Sunelita with another good run, and wins a free hit in midfield. India finally have some possession. A lot of sideway passes but a little bit of breather .

The crowd really making their presence felt. Every China forward move it being cheered at the highest possible decibels.

MIHIR VASAVDA: India had 9 players inside the D, including the goalie. Still China manage to get a penalty corner, which their captain converts. This was coming, it was too much pressure for India to deal with. The question is can they regroup and reclaim the lead?

Oh that's another avoidable there from India. Mumtaz is called for a foul just at the edge of the circle but she doesn't retreat far back enough before going for another tackle. PC for China.

Shivani Naik: Navneet, India's best guide

FAN Yunxia wins a PC for China. ZHANG Ying takes the shot on goal, it is blocked off. But China win a retake.

MIHIR VASAVDA: India trying too many difficult passes, leading to turnover and constant pressure on the goal. The players need to get close, play short uncomplicated passes and keep the ball for a sustained period to get some relief from Chinese attacks.

ANOTHER MISTAKE: Vaishnavi with a bobbling pass across goal that put Nikki Pradhan in all sorts of trouble. She puts her hand up in apology after she couldn't trap the ball but really that was Vaishnavi's mistake. It results in a long corner and then India end up conceding a PC. Late in Q1.

OH DEAR! This is another let off for India. Suman with the mistake this time, goes for a big crossfield pass but she took her time to execute it and ZHONG Jiaqi read it perfectly, intercepted the ball and drove forward with China have a 3vs2 overload. But Suman does well to recover, tracks the run of Ma Ning and blocks the pass across goal.

India are hanging on here, far too many mistakes.

This is worrying for India, because there are again those individual errors creeping in. First Ishika misses a trap, then Nikki fails to win the ball back when she was the favourite to it but China unable to capitalise.

India have had a couple of good forward breaks too in the meantime. Sunelita has made a really bright start to this match, potentially the biggest match of her young career.

China wanted to review this when it was not given a PC.

India have reviewed it after it was given a PC.

It's all happening. Bichu made another big save there.

INDIA REVIEW IS GOOD. NO PC.

Now a PC to China. ZHONG Jiaqi does well down the left baseline.

GOALLLLLLL INDIA!!!! WOW WHAT A START.

SENSATIONAL. This time the injection goes to Navneet at the far battery, she touches the ball to her right and goes for a low strike at an angle, and it is good enough to beat the Chinese defence. Super strike.

NAVNEET, 1-0 India.

A PENALTY CORNER FOR INDIA: Sangita does well to win the ball back in midfield, the ball breaks to Siami first and then she releases Sunelita down the left. The youngster does brilliantly down the left baseline before goalkeeper kicks the ball on to her defender's foot.

China have had an incredible tournament so far, 38 goals scored and just 1 conceded!

Here's a look at the top goal scorers so far. Watch out for Zou Meirong.

Plenty of smiles.

A milestone of Ma Ning, she is playing her 100th match for China. FIH chief Tayyab Ikram felicitates her.

When she took up the role with China, Alyson Annan negotiated wanting to select her own teams for the major events. She saw that China needed fast and skillful players and she used the provincial tournament to pick a big group that she trimmed down last year and started the path to Asian Games glory in January. Apart from the hockey though, she has had to adapt to the new culture as well.

When the Dutch women’s team won the Olympic gold in Tokyo, Alyson became the first woman to win hockey gold medals as a player and then as a coach at separate editions. She had said then “It’s nice, but it’s not why I do this”.

So why does she do this?

“My life changed through sport. And it brought me so much,” she said. “Sport is a way to bring people together and unite people. Look where I am. I am in India with the Chinese team, I’m an Australian living in Holland. It’s wonderful.”

OK the player names are being read out so we are surely going to start in just over 10 mins from now.

Meanwhile, here's a replug of our article from November 2023, when we spoke to China's coach Alyson Annan, the legendary former Aussie star who went on lead to China to the Paris Olympics silver medal.

As a player, she won two Olympic Gold Medals (1996, 2000), and two World Cups (1994, 1998) with Australia. As the coach of the Netherlands women’s team, she took them to silver at the Rio Olympics in 2016, the World Cup title in 2018, and finally, gold at the Tokyo Olympics. Then in Hangzhou, Alyson Annan guided the China women’s hockey team to the Asian Games gold medal that confirmed their place for Paris 2024. Her team broke India’s hearts along the way in the semifinal. In a career that is legendary in every sense of the word, she is now trying to add a new chapter: returning China to the heights of the early 2000s. “We have a target of winning a medal at the Olympics,” Alyson told The Indian Express in Ranchi.

Read more here.

The players are warming up once more... so maybe now we are definitely closer to the start. It still seems to be raining.

The team’s most recent international outing was the European leg in the Pro League, where they often ended up conceding numerous soft Penalty Corners that led to a leaky defence – Harendra had said in his post-mortem of that tour that he wasn’t happy with conceding more than 50 PCs from which 35% resulted in goals. But the team will be boosted by the comeback of defenders Udita and Nikki Pradhan – sharing a total of more than 300 caps between them – as well as Ishika Chaudhary’s return to full fitness.

“Now, I am confident with our defense,” Coach Harendra told The Indian Express before the tournament. “During the Pro League, I had to adjust with midfielders playing out of position. Udita and Nikki know how to hold, when to push up, and when to drop. Their experience is not easy to replace.” And so, in the camp leading up to Hangzhou, the prime objective was to become more watertight at the back. “The focus was definitely on defence that we should not give soft PCs. And if we do, we should not allow opponents to score. We worked hard on the PC defensive phase and how to avoid conceding them in the first place. Let’s try to tackle before opponents enter the circle. So, we worked on improving our 1v1 individual tackling. And since Nikki and Udita are back, the team also feels confident that we won’t be conceding easy PCs.”

The players are out warming up based on the visuals we are seeing but an announcement has just been made that the start of the match has been delayed by 25 minutes if we heard it right. So that's a 5.55 pm start then. It's raining as the players are warming up and the official website says inclement weather.

Minutes before Mumtaz’s goal, however, India shot themselves in the foot. In the first minute of the second half, with the scoreline still 0-1 and India finishing the first half as the side on attacking ascendancy, playing flowing hockey, coach Harendra Singh wouldn’t have wanted to change much. But when Vaishnavi Vitthal Phalke – who has otherwise had a solid tournament – made the cardinal error of playing a square pass out of defence instead of going away from the danger area with the Chinese press well and truly on. The ball fell kindly to Chen, who squeezed it past Bichu Devi from a gifted 1-vs-1 situation. Vaishnavi had gotten herself into a similar situation in the first half but recovered quickly to put in a brilliant last-ditch tackle to prevent what seemed a certain goal. Even India’s first goal, coming in the fourth minute, was an avoidable error as Jyothi couldn’t clear the ball cleanly, allowing the tournament’s leading goalscorer Zou Meirong to have an easy tap-in.