Donghae City (S Korea),
\nDefending champions India qualified for the summit clash of the women\u2019s Asian Champions Trophy after edging past Malaysia 3-2 on Thursday. India, who beat Japan 4-1 and China 3-1 in their previous matches, sealed a spot in the final with a match in hand in the pool stage. They are sitting atop the table with nine points and will next take on hosts South Korea on Saturday in what would be a rehearsal for Sunday\u2019s final. South Korea beat China 3-1 in the other match on Thursday, taking their tally to seven points. They are second on the table, with third-placed China four points behind with one game to play.
\nFast start
\nIndia had beaten Malaysia 6-0 in a warm-up match before the tournament, and it seemed India were going for a repeat with their attacking start. They earned a penalty corner in the very first minute, but Malaysia denied drag-flicker Gurjit Kaur. India got the breakthrough when Gurjit converted a penalty corner in the 17th minute. She found the bottom right corner to get her second goal in two matches. India did not look their attacking best. However, the halftime break helped India regroup. They defended more aggressively and the high press worked as India scored in the 33rd minute. Vandana Katariya intercepted a pass in the Malaysian circle before finishing with a reverse strike to get her third goal of the tournament. For the third match in a row, India went 2-0 up. But their two-goal lead didn\u2019t last very long. Three minutes later, India conceded a penalty stroke when defender Deep Grace caused an infringement while attempting to stop a Malaysian attacker from taking a shot on goal. Nuraini Rashid converted the penalty stroke. The following minutes saw India win as many as three PCs but could not make much of it. India, though, regained their two-goal lead in the 40th minute. A brilliant long pass by skipper Sunita Lakra was deflected in by young forward Lalremsiami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donghae City (S Korea), Defending champions India qualified for the summit clash of the women\u2019s Asian Champions Trophy after edging past Malaysia 3-2 on Thursday. India, who beat Japan 4-1 and China 3-1 in their previous matches, sealed a spot in the final with a match in hand in the pool stage. They are sitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31406","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\/31406","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=31406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31408,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31406\/revisions\/31408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}