Donghae City (Korea): Defending champions India maintained an all-win record and also breezed into the summit clash of the women’s Asian Champions Trophy (ACT) hockey tournament after edging past Malaysia 3-2 here, Thursday.
This was the eves’ third consecutive win in the tourney. India had beaten Japan 4-1 and China 3-1 in their previous matches. With nine points from three games, India have booked their final spot. They still have another game in hand against hosts Korea.
Gurjit Kaur (17th), Vandana Katariya (33th) and Lalremsiami (40th) sounded the board for India while Nuraini Rashid (36th) and Hanis Onn (48th) scored for Malaysia.
“We could have made better use of our chances to score. Though we are happy with the win, we are not about how we played. We will discuss about the mistakes we made and how to improve ahead of the next match against Korea,” skipper Sunita Lakra said after the match.
Prior to the tournament, India had beaten Malaysia 6-0 in a warm-up game. However, Thursday turned out to be a totally different affair with the ball traveling from one goal to the other very quickly.
India scored when penalty corner specialist Gurjit improvised on a Lilima Minz injection to strike the ball past Malaysian goalkeeper with a low flick to the bottom right-hand corner of the net.
India had a few more chances in the first and second quarters, but the Malaysian goalkeeper came up with impressive saves to keep India away from scoring.
After the interval, India doubled their tally when quick-thinking Vandana dispossessed a Malaysian player to score. Malaysia, however, hit right back, when a Deep Grace Ekka infringement inside the ‘D’ earned them a stroke and Nuraini converted.
India made it 3-1 when Sunita found Lalremsiami on the top of the circle with a pinpoint pass and the latter made no mistake in deflecting the ball into the goal with a pinpoint pass.
