Rajgir: India’s struggles were once again evident as they conceded a goal in the second minute of their second Super4s game of Asia Cup against Malaysia at Rajgir Sports Complex here on Wednesday.It was mind-boggling how the Indian defenders were reduced to almost nothing as Shafiq Hassan ran down the field and helped the Malaysians take the lead. What followed over the next 13 minutes was just terrible hockey by the Indians. They passed blindly and couldn’t connect with each other. They panicked, too, and started taking wild shots at the goal.It was, however, a whole different story after the break as they scored three in the second quarter and one in the third to bag a 4-1 victory. Manpreet Singh scored their equaliser in the 17th minute while Sukhjeet Singh made it 2-1 in the 19th. Five minutes later, Shilanand Lakra scored the third for India and Vivek Sagar Prasad made it 4-1 in the 38th minute.The win helped the hosts grab the top spot in the Super4s stage with 4 points from two games. Malaysia and China are both on three points while South Korea are at the bottom with one point.Irrespective of the showing in the first 15 minutes, India coach Craig Fulton was pleased with how they came back into the match and grabbed the win.“The second goal was great. The third goal was also a good team goal. It was also nice to get a rebound goal as well off the PC because other players were involved. So just a good balance tonight and I’m happy for the group,” said Fulton after the match.After a rest day on Friday y, India will now face off against China on Saturday while Malaysia will take on South Korea in the other match of the Super4s stage.Earlier, India’s first goal came after they won five back-to-back PCs. The first four were well blocked and Harmanpreet Singh’s flick off the fifth PC was also saved by the goalkeeper. But the ball fell just in front of him and Manpreet scored off it in the 17th minute.India then upped their tempo and scored two brilliant team goals.The first came after Hardik Singh played the ball from the left to Abhishek. He played it to Shilanand and Sukhjeet scored off his final pass. Five minutes later, Hardik grabbed a long ball from Sanjay and played it to Dilpreet, who fired it in front of the goal as Shilanand deflected it into the net.The last one came after Jugraj Singh hit the framework off a PC and Sumit collected the rebound, played it to Manpreet, who in turn gave it to Vivek and he scored from near the goal.It was a lovely finish to the match that began in such a terrible fashion but as Hardik said after the match, “We were confident that we could score four-five goals against them so we weren’t worried after conceding the early goal. We stuck to our structure and kept calm because we knew we would get the result.”China win despite suspension to two players: Earlier in the day, China came back from their defeat to Malaysia to beat South Korea 3-0 in their second Super4s game that was delayed due to heavy rain. However, they had to play with 16 players because two of their players were suspended due to a brawl that took place between the Chinese and the Malaysian players during their game on Wednesday.
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The suspension was issued after showing the team the video of the incident and they could appeal against it, but they decided not to and played without Yuanlin Lu and Shihao Du.Meanwhile, in the classification match Bangladesh beat Kazakhstan 5-1.
