Tokyo: The Indian men’s hockey team were pummelled 1-7 by World No.1 Australia in their second pool A match of the Olympic Games here Sunday. It was morale-shattering loss which exposed every possible chink in the side’s armour. It was India’s biggest loss since Australian Graham Reid took charge of the team as coach in April 2019.
Australia looked dominant and were in complete control from the onset, scoring through Daniel Beale (10th), Joshua Beltz (26th), Andrew Flynn Ogilvie (23rd), Jeremy Hayward (21st), Blake Govers (40th, 42nd) and Tim Brand (51st) to secure the easy win. India’s lone goal came from the stick of Dilpreet Singh in the 34th minute.
India had earlier defeated New Zealand 3-2 in their opening fixture Saturday. The Manpreet Singh-led side will next play Spain, Tuesday
The eight-time former champions looked completely off colour from the start. The team’s backline was put under relentless pressure by the Australians.
It was India who had the first chance at scoring, earning a penalty corner in the eighth minute, but Harmanpreet Singh failed to execute from the set piece.
Two minutes later, Australia surged ahead when Beale deflected in Jacob Whetton’s strike after a poor penalty corner execution. A minute later, Dilpreet missed a golden chance from close range to level the scores.
The second quarter completely belonged to Australia. They scored three goals in a span of five minutes to take the game away from their opponents.
The Indians showed some spark after the change of ends and attacked the Australian goal in numbers. In the process they secured three back-to-back penalty corners but wasted all of them. Dilpreet then infused some life into the game by pulling one back for India, beautifully deflecting in Rupinder’s defence splitting pass from the mid-field. But that was as far as the Men in Blue could go.
Caption
Indian players had a tough time in checking the marauding Australians during the game played Sunday PTI photo