Paris: The Indian men’s hockey team once again rose to the occasion and stood tall against Great Britain to take a 1-1 (4-2) victory in a shootout to secure a semifinal berth in the Paris Olympics on Sunday.
This is the first time since 1972 in Munich that India have reached the semifinals in men’s hockey in two successive Olympic Games. Previously, India had won successive bronze medals at the 1968 and 1972 Olympics after reaching the semis. India have won the bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics and are in the fray to at least replicate or better that performance in Paris.
For India, captain Harmanpreet Singh (22’) netted a goal while Lee Morton (27’) was on the scoresheet for Great Britain as the match ended with score tied at 1-1 in the regular time, thus forcing the game into the shootout, where India converted all their chances and denied their opponents twice to win the quarter-final match 1-1 (4-2) and make it to the semi-finals.
Great Britain started the game on the front foot and India looked set to play on the counter-attack. Both sides came out swinging in a fiery first 15 minutes which saw the deadlock remain intact.
In a controversial turn of events, India’s Amit Rohidas was shown a red card two minutes into the second quarter which reduced India to 10 men for the rest of the match. Despite the red card India took the 1-0 lead against the run of play through skipper Harmanpreet Singh’s penalty corner conversion in the 22nd minute which saw him score his seventh goal of the tournament.
Five minutes later Lee Morton equalised for Great Britain to tie the game, leaving a mountain for India to climb in the second half. To make matters worse, Sumit was shown a green card in the final minute of the third quarter which reduced them to nine men for the next two minutes. As a result, India started the final quarter with just nine men and held Great Britain from taking the lead.
The third and fourth quarters saw Great Britain try their best to penetrate the Indian backline who had set up camp but a great defensive effort and India’s wall PR Sreejesh, who is playing his final tournament in national colours, stood tall and denied the opponents from scoring their second goal on repeated attempts and helped the side in dragging the game onto the shootout.
James Albery, Harmanpreet Singh, Zach Wallace and Sukhjeet Singh all scored their respective penalties to keep it 2-2 after the first two rounds but successive misses by Connor Williamson and Phillip Roger saw India pull ahead as Lalit Upadhyay and Rajkumar Pal scored for India to make it 4-2 in the shootout.
India will face the winner of the quarter-finals between Germany and Argentina in the semifinal on Tuesday.
–IANS
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