Resurgent India, playing an international match after a year, outplayed the hosts Germany for a fluent 6-1 victory today. This is by far the highest margin victory of higher ranked German field hockey team on synthetic surface.
India’s goal scorers were Nilakanta Sharma (13′), Vivek Sagar Prasad (27′, 28′), Lalit Kumar Upadhyay (41′), Akashdeep Singh (42′) and Harmanpreet Singh (47′), who outplayed the hosts and led their team to a winning start on their first assignment of 2021.
Vivek Sagar struck a brace in the all significant win for the visitors
Its a splendid performance from India as the hosts put up a brave fight after half time, in which spell they earned six penalty corners. But, according to reports, captain Sreejesh did an encore frustrating German penalty corner machinery to make use of these penalty corners.
“It was absolutely thrilling to play after so long and Coach’s advice to us was ‘go and enjoy the game’ and so we did. This was the same German side who are playing the FIH Hockey Pro League matches, and I feel we did well against this squad, considering we were playing after a year. We had worked a lot on individual skills and had planned tactical play against Germany back in the camp. We just had to execute it today and it was really exciting to be back with a win,” stated PR Sreejesh after the scintillating performance.
After a day’s break, the Indian Men’s Team will pit against the hosts Germany on Tuesday, 2nd March at 2030 hrs IST.