Hamilton: India scraped past hosts New Zealand 3-2 in their campaign-opener of the Four-Nation Invitational hockey tournament second leg here, Wednesday. India will next face Thursday first leg winners Belgium.
Lalit Upadhyay (seventh), Harjeet Singh (32nd) and Rupinder Pal Singh (36th) scored for India while Daniel Harris (23rd) and Kane Russell (37th) were on target for the Kiwis.
India made an early breakthrough when skipper Manpreet Singh found Vivek Sagar Prasad whose reverse hit rebounded off the Kiwi custodian and found Lalit who scored past Devon Manchester to put India ahead.
The second quarter saw New Zealand constantly attacking the Indian circle which kept Indian goalkeeper PR Sreejesh busy. One such circle penetration won the Kiwis their first penalty corner (PC) but Russell’s drag-flick was well saved by Sreejesh. However, an error by an Indian defender saw New Zealand restore parity when Harris scored from a rebound.
India came back with an aggressive approach after the change of ends and striker Mandeep Singh was clever to earn a penalty corner for India which was successfully converted by Harjeet.
Lalit later won India their second penalty corner and this time it was Rupinder who found the target when he improvised Ramandeep Singh’s injection to find the bottom right of the post.
A minute later, New Zealand reduced the margin with Russell scoring of a penalty corner. The last quarter saw New Zealand make some desperate attempts to level the score but their efforts were thwarted by alert Indian defenders.
