Indian Men\u2019s Hockey Team beat hosts New Zealand 3-1 in the final round robin match in the double-leg Four Nations Invitational Tournament at Blake Park,<\/p>\n
Tauranga on Saturday to enter the final. They will square off against Belgium, who beat Japan 4-1. Harmanpreet Singh (2\u2019), Dilpreet Singh (12\u2019) and Mandeep<\/p>\n
Singh (47\u2019) scored in India\u2019s win after the team and they will be eyeing revenge in the final after having suffered a 0-2 loss against Belgium in their previous<\/p>\n
match.<\/p>\n
India played aggressively right from the start. Their first breakthrough came as early as the second minute of the match when a circle entry fetched them a PC<\/p>\n
created by Mandeep Singh. It was Harmanpreet Singh who stepped up for the drag flick and he was impeccable and fierce as he improvised the injection to<\/p>\n
flick the ball past New Zealand goal keeper Richard Joyce and earn India 1-0 lead. The early goal undoubtedly put the Black Sticks on the backfoot.<\/p>\n
The next few minutes saw India hold their defence with Rupinder Pal Singh, who was rested for the match against Belgium, leading the charge of defenders as<\/p>\n
their man-to-man marking was spot on, not allowing New Zealand to make easy forays into India\u2019s circle. India colt Dilpreet Singh, who had scored two goals in<\/p>\n
his first outing for the national side, was impressive when he picked up the assist to put the ball past the New Zealand goal post in the 21st minute taking India\u2019s<\/p>\n
lead to a comfortable 2-0. India held on to the lead with well-rounded performance. Though India conceded a PC in the 42nd minute which was well-executed<\/p>\n
by New Zealand\u2019s Kane Russell, India didn\u2019t drop their momentum and continued their attack swiftly and tactically.<\/p>\n
In the 47th minute, Mandeep Singh was excellent in the circle to score an impressive goal to earn India a winning score-line of 3-1. \u201cWe started the match much<\/p>\n
better today and I saw individual improvement. It\u2019s important for the players to keep pushing themselves. I am particularly happy about today\u2019s win because the<\/p>\n
team did a lot of analyzing ahead of the match and their keenness to improve was evident in today\u2019s match,\u201d expressed Chief Coach Sjoerd Marijne after the<\/p>\n
match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indian Men\u2019s Hockey Team beat hosts New Zealand 3-1 in the final round robin match in the double-leg Four Nations Invitational Tournament at Blake Park, Tauranga on Saturday to enter the final. They will square off against Belgium, who beat Japan 4-1. Harmanpreet Singh (2\u2019), Dilpreet Singh (12\u2019) and Mandeep Singh (47\u2019) scored in India\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19320,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19318\/revisions\/19320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}