Kakamigahara (Japan)
\nThe Indian women’s hockey team continued its splendid run and came up with an over-all performance to stun defending champions Japan 4-2 in the semi-final of the Asia Cup hockey tournament, here on Friday.<\/p>\n
Goals from Gurjit Kaur (7th, 9th minutes), Navjot Kaur (9th) and Lalremsiami (38th) ensured India’s entry into Sunday’s final where they will face China.<\/p>\n
India had earlier defeated an unpredictable China 4-1 in the league stage of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Against Japan, the Indians got off to a rollicking start by earning back-to-back penalty corners to put pressure on the host nation.<\/p>\n
Dragflicker Gurjit Kaur gave India a 1-0 lead in the seventh minute when she improvised the injection to send the ball past Japanese goalkeeper Akio Tanaka.<\/p>\n
Two minutes later, Navjot Kaur doubled India’s lead when she struck a field goal from a perfect assist by forward Vandana Katariya.<\/p>\n
Almost immediately, India won a penalty corner and Gurjit was yet again on target as she gave India a commanding 3-0 in no time.<\/p>\n
India won another penalty corner in the first quarter but this time Tanaka made a fine save.<\/p>\n
While the first 15 minutes belonged to India, the defending champions made a strong comeback in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
Japan unleashed a well coordinated attack on the Indian defence and found space for Shiho Tsujii to score past Indian custodian Savita in the 17th minute.<\/p>\n
The next few minutes saw India’s defence put to test by the Japanese.<\/p>\n
Yui Ishibashi gave India jitters when she scored another field goal to close the gap to 2-3 in the 28th minute.<\/p>\n
From there on, the Indians were needed to play cautiously and not make impulsive decisions. This was exactly what they did after the 10-minute break at halftime.<\/p>\n
While Savita made a brilliant save to deny Japan from a penalty corner at the start of the third quarter, Lalremsiami scored a sensational field goal in the 38th minute to extend India’s lead to 4-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kakamigahara (Japan) The Indian women’s hockey team continued its splendid run and came up with an over-all performance to stun defending champions Japan 4-2 in the semi-final of the Asia Cup hockey tournament, here on Friday. Goals from Gurjit Kaur (7th, 9th minutes), Navjot Kaur (9th) and Lalremsiami (38th) ensured India’s entry into Sunday’s final […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9316","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\/9316","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=9316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9318,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316\/revisions\/9318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}