Kuantan is the state
capital of Pahang, Malaysia. It is near the mouth of the Kuantan River and
faces the South China Sea. Kuantan is the ninth largest city in Malaysia.
The 2016 Asian Men's Hockey
Champions Trophy is the 4th edition of the Asian Hockey Champions Trophy
for men. The tournament is being held in
Malaysia, Kuantan. Six Asian teams (Pakistan, China, India, Japan, South
Korea and Malaysia) are playing in the tournament which involves round-robin
league among all teams followed by play-offs for final positions. Qnet is the
official sponsor.
In some good news, India
finished the round robin stages of the Asian Champions Trophy with a 2-1 win over
Malaysia. The 2011 champions India
defied both the Malaysian side which had won all three of its matches and the
crowd support as well. Rupinder Pal Singh continued his sublime touch from the
penalty corners to score a goal in the first quarter and Malaysia pulled one
back with Razie Rahim in the second quarter to bring parity at the break. Into
the final quarter, India were reduced to ten men after Surender Kumar was
yellow carded with 11 minutes to be played. This gave Malaysia the chance to
create pressure on the Indian goal and they did with three penalty corners to
their name but none were converted with goalkeeper Akash Chikte producing a
sublime game to defy the hosts on numerous instances. With just 3 minutes to go, India got a penalty corner of their own and
Rupinder was again on hand to give India the goal and a win.
Earlier, India thrashed
China 9-0 to stay in the hunt for top spot. Akashdeep Singh, Yousuf Affan and
Jasjit Singh Kumar scored two goals each as India steamrolled the Chinese
defence. The Indians were looking to equal their 10-goal feat against Japan in
this tournament when the hooter ended the contest. Rupinder Pal Singh,
captaining India in this contest, Nikkin Thimmaiah and Lalit Upadhyay also made
entries in the score-sheet as India boosted their points tally to 10 from four
matches, one of which was drawn.
Anything on hockey would
not be complete without reference to Indian Gold medals in Olympics, the last
of which came in 1980 Moscow. The teams that
boycotted include - New Zealand, Australia and Paksitan. Moscow Olympics hockey
competition was played on poligras fields; these synthetic pitches did not have
automatic sprinklers. When the pitches had to be watered, it was by lorries
with hoses fixed to their bonnets.
In a greatly weakened
field of participants, India thrashed last minute entry Tanzania 18-0 in its
first match. In one purple patch, India found the net 5 times in as many
minutes. This huge victory over Tanzania was the second biggest score in
Olympic hockey, after the 24-1 victory by India over USA in the 1932 Los
Angeles Olympics.
In this tournament – India
plays South Korea, while Malaysia plays Pakistan in the Semi-finals to be held
on 29th Oct 2016. When will those happy days be back again !
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
27th Oct 2016.
Pic credit : http://www.asiahockey.org
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