JAKARTA: India scored 26 goals against Hong Kong China in their second match at the men’s Pool A match at the Asian Games. This was India’s highest margin of victory since the 1932 Olympics when they defeated the United States 24–1. Coach Harendra Singh was elated with the margin of the win and paid tribute to his players.
“They deserve the accolades as collectively the team performed well,” said Harendra.“We are taking every match on its merits and in actual fact, our match against Japan will be tough, so we want to be ready for that. Japan, as a side, is very organized and tactical and we need to be at our very best for that game.”
Akashdeep Singh was the first to get his name on the scoresheet, scoring in the second minute. A minute later. Manpreet Singh was on target to make it 2-0 before a brace from penalty corner specialist Rupinder Pal Singh who scored in the 3rd and 4th minute to give India a 4-0 lead within five minutes of the start.
SV Sunil (7th minute), Vivek Prasad (14th minute), Lalit Kumar (17th minute, 19th minutes), Manpreet Singh (16th minute), Mandeep Singh (21st and 23rd minutes) , Amit Rohidas (26th minute), Harmanpreet Singh (29th minute) and Varun Kumar (30th minute) gave India a 14-0 lead at the break. Not only were scoring from field goals, but they also managed to net five penalty corner goals from the nine they were awarded for the first 30 minutes of the match.
Akashdeep made it 15-0 in the 32nd minute while Lalit powers in the 16th goal via a penalty corner. Dilpreet Singh (48th minute), Chinglensana Singh (51st minute), Harmanpreet (52nd, 53rd, 55th minutes) Simranjeet Singh (53rd minute)Surender ( 54th minute), Rupinder Pal ( 59th minute) completed the historic win for Hockey India.
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