The women’s teams of Kazakhstan and Malaysia were in sparkling form on the opening day of the Hockey World League Round 1 tournament in Kuantan (MAS), cruising to victories over Sri Lanka and Singapore respectively.
Kazakhstan opened their campaign with a convincing 6-1 win over Sri Lanka at the Kuantan Hockey Stadium. Having led 3-0 within the opening eight minutes, Kazakhstan was foiled by the tenacity of the Sri Lanka players who defended stoutly despite being under pressure a large part of the match. Though awarded 11 penalty corners in the match, Kazakhstan scored only four and this attributed to their failure to notch up a much bigger win. To read the full report, please click here.
Hosts Malaysia got off to a resounding start when they defeated Singapore 11-0 in their first match of the Hockey World League. It was an effortless win by the Malaysians who ran rings around a relatively young Singapore side that had eight players from the Junior Asia Cup squad promoted to senior ranks. Singapore even fielded 14-year-old Neo Yu Shan in the starting eleven and she gave a good account of herself and this can only augur well for the islanders in the future. Malaysia performed well from penalty corners, scoring 8 goals from the 17 set pieces that they awarded. To read the full report, please click here.
On Saturday, Singapore and Sri Lanka will go head to head in a bid to collect their first points of the tournament at 1600hrs (GMT +8). That match will be followed by the meeting between Kazakhstan and Malaysia, both winners on Friday, at 1800hrs.
For those not in the know, the Hockey World League has been developed by the FIH to present hockey at its best whilst also providing rapidly improving hockey nations with a stage to show what they are capable of. The tournament has four rounds which take place between August 2012 and February 2013, with each round acting as a qualifier for the next. This process gives every team the potential reach the tournament final. The Hockey World League also acts as the qualification competition for the FIH World Cups which take place in 2014, with 12 qualification places up for grabs. To read more information about the aims and structure of the tournament, please click here.
Official match reports from the competition will be posted to the Kuantan 2012 World League webpage at the end of each tournament day. For real-time results, please follow the FIH World League Twitter page:@World_League1.
