India crushes Mexico in Olympic qualifiers

Indian men’s hockey team is on fire as they slammed as many as 18 goals to make mockery of their North American opponents Mexico in the World Hockey Olympic qualifying tournament played at the Prince of Wales Country Club in Santiago, Chile on Tuesday.

India maintained their winning streak by registering their third successive win in the qualifying tournament.

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The win make India’s chances brighter to qualify for the Beijing Olympics but they had to still get past the final hurdle of Great Britain team on Thursday after a day’s rest.

Great Britain team is also one of the strong contenders and also remained unbeaten in the tournament thus far. Both the teams are having nine points each but when it comes to goal average Indian team has scored 33 goals as compared to Britain’s 23 while India conceded four goals to Britain’s one so far.

India hammered Mexico 18-1 on the third day of the World Hockey Olympic Qualifier in Santiago, while Austria struggled to beat Russia 5-4 and Great Britain routed host team Chile 4-1.

Mexico team got off the blocks quite well as they forced three penalty corners in the first five minutes of the game but the Indian defenders pushed them at bay with their strong and clean defence.

India’s star striker Rajpal Singh and Prabhjot Singh scored a hat-trick each scoring a total of six and four goals respectively for the team in the day’s first game under scorching heat. Drag-flicker V Raghunath did the foursome act converting three of them from penalty corners.

Shivendra Singh scored a brace with Tushar Khandekar and Sardara Singh slotted apiece to round off India’s tally. Indian team led 8-0 at the breather.

The second half was almost fully played on the Mexican citadel as Indian team pumped in ten more goals to pile up misery on the rival team. The Mexican players never gave up but could not prevent the score from elevating to 18-0.

Mexican team were rewarded for their perseverance as they scored a lone consolation goal in the dying minutes of the match through Pol Moreno Quiroz, after some untidy Indian defence let the opponents to get past the defence reading the scoreline 18-1.

RESUTS DAY-3 (Tuesday March 4)

MEX vs IND 1-18 (HALF-TIME 0:8)
AUT vs RUS 5-4 (HALF-TIME 1:2)
CHI vs GBR 1-4 (HALF-TIME 0:0)