A brace of goals each from Rupinder Singh, VR Raghunath and Nitin Thimmaiah helped India to beat Oman 9-1 today in the Hockey World League.

Dharamvir, and debutants Gurjinder Singh and Mandeep Singh accounted for the remaining Indian goals.

Oman played well in patches and got a couple of penalty corners out of which it struck before the first half.

Oman converted the penalty corner through Mohamed Hubais AL Shar in the 35th min of the match.

India and Oman are not regulars in international hockey. The previous occasion both played in India was on the same ground during the 1982 Asian Games. India won them comfortably 10-0.

India’s best performance against Oman was 11-0 achieved a month before at Doha Asian Champions Trophy.

India somehow could not better both the results, and was at times on backfoot in the match which otherwise was one-sided insofar as scoreboard was concerned.