Pakistan and India displayed their shooting skills against weak oppositions in the men’s hockey competition of the Asian Games here at Guangzhou on Wednesday.
By Mr S. Thyagarajan.
Pakistan subdued Hong Kong China to a 12-0 defeat while India beat Bangladesh by nine goals to nil in Pool B matches.
The seven times gold medalist in the event, Pakistan, has recalled veteran striker Sohail Abbas for this competition in an effort to regain the gold and make it to London Olympics. The team is now coached by Michel van Heuvel of the Netherlands.
The Hong Kong team offered little resistance to the consistent attack launched by Rehan Butt and Shakeel Abbasi. In fact, Rehan opened the account within a minute of the start. Sohail was content to score only two penalty corners.
India’s match against Bangladesh witnessed the 100th goal between the teams being scored, with India running out 9-0 winners. The honour went to Tushar Khandekar in the early minutes of the match.
Sandeep Singh was the top scorer for India with four goals. With Pakistan and Japan in line before the semi-final, India has six points from two matches.
In the women’s section, Korea scored a solitary goal victory over India to record its third successive victory in the seven team round-robin league. Kim Jongjee scored the all important goal.
Korea, fighting to regain the supremacy which it enjoyed not long ago before surrendering it to China, has nine points and three matches remaining. Two of them are against China and Japan, the strong contenders for the gold medal match.
Kazakhstan tasted its first fragrance of victory beating Thailand by three goals to nil. Striker Anastassia Chesherbakova scored three in a row, two in the first and one in the second.
Defending champion, China, had to work hard to break the initial resistance from Malaysia to open the scoring midway in the first half.
The Malaysian goal-keeper Yahya Farah brought off a few good saves to delay China’s first goal but the team ended with a 5-0 verdict.
It was the hugely talented Zhao Yudiao who opened the scoring for China, which has won all its three matches.
Results:
Men's Pool B
India 9 (Tushakar Khandekar 2, Sandeep Singh 4, Shivendra Singh, Rajpal Singh, Dharamvir Singh)) beat Bangladesh 0. HT 3-0
Pakistan 12 (Rehan Butt 2, Sohail Abbas 2, Fareed Ahmed, Waqas Muhammad, 3, Imran Muhammad 2, Abdul Haseem Khan 2) beat Hong Kong, China 0 HT 7-0.
Women
Korea 1 (Kim Jongjee) beat India 0 HT 1-0.
Kazakhstan 3 (Anasassiya Chserbakova 3) beat Thailand 0 HT 2-0.
China 6 (Zhao Yudiao 2, Ren Ye, Fu Baorong, Xu Xiaoxu, Ma Wei) beat Malaysia 0. HT 3-0.
Thursday’s matches: Men: Pool A: Singapore v Oman. Malaysia v Korea; Pool:B: Bangladesh v Hong Kong;Japan v Pakistan.
