4th Women's ACT day 3 - Asian Hockey Federation

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Singapore (1 Nov, 2016): India continued its winning form and Japan climbed to second in the table standings with wins over Malaysia and China respectively today in the 4^th Women Asian Champions Trophy at the Sengkang Hockey in Singapore.

The Indians registered a 2-0 victory over Malaysia Tigress in their third pool match on Tuesday while world No 10 Japan defeated China, ranked at world No 8, with field goal from Nagai Hazuki (20^th) and Yuda Hazuki’s penalty corner in the 32nd minute.

With this win, India remained at the top of the pool table with seven points which Japan is second with four points, Korea third (3) and China moved to fourth also on three points and Malaysia at the bottom with no points.

Any hopes of Malaysia taking the lead, as they did against China two days ago, was quickly doused when Poonam Rani scored in the seventh minute from a well-executed field goal.

Having got off to a strong start, Indian eves defended well throughout the game, not allowing the Malaysians too many moves into their territory. The Malaysian Tigress made several goal shot attempts but were stopped by goalkeeper Rajani.

A penalty corner goal converted by Deepika in the 45^th minute further inspired the Indians in the remaining innings of the match. Until then India had three failed attempted at converting penalty corners despite trying different variations.

“The positive aspect of this game against India is the Malaysian players have been showing a lot of improvement since losing our first match against Korea,” said Malaysian head coach, K. Dharmaraj. “We have never been able to venture far when playing against top teams like China, Korea, and India before.”

With this goal, Deepika leads the top scorer chart with three goals in the tournament so far. India will next take on China on Friday. For the Malaysians, it was their third straight defeat in the tournament having lost 2-5 against Korea and 1-3 against China earlier.

Two matches are scheduled to be played on Wednesday (2 Oct). The Malaysians play Japan and Korea take on China.