Mumbai
\nCaptain Sunil Chhetri led from the front with a hat-trick as hosts India flexed their muscles and outplayed Chinese Taipei 5-0 to begin their campaign on a rousing note in the four-nation Intercontinental Cup here tonight.<\/p>\n
Chhetri, India\u2019s all-time highest scorer, led by example once again, scoring in the 14th, 34th and 62nd minute of the opener at the Mumbai Football Arena.<\/p>\n
The India skipper\u2019s team-mate at Bengaluru FC, Udanta Singh, netted the other goal in the 48th minute, in what was a thoroughly dominant display by Stephen Constantine\u2019s men.<\/p>\n
Pronay Halder completed the rout of Chinese Taipei by finding the back of the net with his 78th minute long-ranger from the edge of the box.<\/p>\n
Such was India\u2019s dominance\u2014they enjoyed 67 percent possession\u2014that their goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu remained a spectator for a major part of the game.<\/p>\n
India started on the offensive straightaway and were rewarded for their attacking intent when Jeje Lalpekhlua forwarded a through ball for Chhetri to slot the ball past the Chinese Taipei goalkeeper following an expert first touch.<\/p>\n
There was a brief halt in the proceedings owing to an injury to Subhashish Bose, following which the visiting side looked to get into the box a create their first real chance, but the attempted final shot was off target and also lacked power.<\/p>\n
Instead, India doubled their lead as Chhetri, after a fine team display of one-touch passing by him and his team-mates Jeje and Anirudh Thapa at the edge of the box, struck from a difficult angle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai Captain Sunil Chhetri led from the front with a hat-trick as hosts India flexed their muscles and outplayed Chinese Taipei 5-0 to begin their campaign on a rousing note in the four-nation Intercontinental Cup here tonight. Chhetri, India\u2019s all-time highest scorer, led by example once again, scoring in the 14th, 34th and 62nd minute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32852","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\/32852","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=32852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32854,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32852\/revisions\/32854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}