Bhubaneswar: The Indian men’s hockey team made a late comeback to level the scores before emerging 3-1 victorious in the shootout in their second FIH Pro League match against the Netherlands at the Kalinga Stadium here Sunday.
India secured two points from the match (including the bonus point for winning the shoot-out), while the Netherlands got one point as the scoreline was 3-3 at the regulation time.
India had outplayed the same side 5-2 in their debut FIH Pro League match here Saturday. India thus took five points out of a possible six from its first two FIH Hockey Pro League matches.
In the second match, the Manpreet Singh-led team were trailing 1-3 midway the fourth and final quarter before Mandeep Singh (51st) and Rupinder Pal Singh (55th) scored to level the scoreline. Lalit Upadhyay had earlier scored India’s first goal in the 25th minute.
Weerden van der Mink (24th), Jereon Hrtzberger (26th) and Kellerman Bjorn Kellerman (27th) scored for the Dutch team.
The second quarter blitzkrieg from the Dutchmen seemed to have decided the match in their favour but India scored two goals in the last 10 minutes to level the scores.
In the shootout, Vivek Prasad, Gurjant Singh and Akashdeep Singh scored for India while Harmanpreet Singh and Rupinder Pal Singh missed. For the Netherlands, only Mirco Pruijser scored and they fluffed their other attempts.
After the Netherlands game, India will host World Champions Belgium February 8 and 9 followed by two more home ties against Australia February 22 and 23. The Indian team will then leave for the away games in Germany (April 25 and 26) and Great Britain (May 2 and 3).
PNN & Agencies