By IANS
Chennai : India swamped Sri Lanka Saturday in a totally one-sided match here equalling the event record during the BSNL Asia Cup Hockey Tournament, as the home side scored 20 goals, equally divided in the two halves of play.
India’s Prabhjot Singh netted five of them including a hat-trick.
A similar score line has been achieved only by two teams in the past in this tournament – on both occasions the team that got the rough end of the stick was Thailand at the hands of neighbour Malaysia and later Pakistan doled out a similar punishment.
The Hong Kong team too was given a thrashing by the Malaysians with a difference of 12 goals. The final tally read 13-1 but the irony was that the losing team had actually opened the scorebook by sending in a field goal at the 12th minute.
Incidentally, Thailand had the mortification of almost touching that dubious record as South Korea pulverised them by 16 goals earlier in the day.
Sri Lanka’s hapless goalkeeper Jayasooriya could not do anything about the assaults from the Indian forwards and the penalty corner specialist V. Raghunath who scored a brace of which one was a drag-shot.
The other braces were blasted by S.V. Sunil and Tushar Khandekar.
India’s unrelenting attack on the Lankan goal began soon after the meek back-pass by the visitors when the “play” whistle was blown by Ghanaian umpire Richmond Attipoe at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium.
In the second minute Prabodh Tirkey troubled the scorers for the first time off a penalty corner.
That began the incessant rain of goals, which kept happening within intervals ranging between one to six minutes.
The islanders were never in it, so demoralising was the charge of the inspired men in blue – but for one occasion in the second half when the home team was a little casual after its huge success of having already scored 14 goals.
But stung by this, the Indians counter-attacked and sank six more goals in quick succession – the last one being the contribution of Rajpal Singh.
Every time Sri Lanka tried to do a pass longer than 15 feet the ball was invariably captured by the home team.
In fact so confused were the personnel manning the public address system in announcing the home team’s next achievements that they jumped the gun thrice – much to the amusement of the stands full of Indian supporters.
When the Lankans had done their bit against the fancied South Korea Friday, the Chennai crowd roared in approval. But on Saturday the audience had eyes only for the men in blue jerseys.
Indian Coach Joaquim Carvalho was unsuitably modest after the victory when he spoke to the press.
“We were not playing for any records. Our focal point was plain and simple. We wanted to win and with the best margin possible. We have put it across to the Chinese (Friday) and we have clocked a big victory today. Monday we have to tackle the tricky (South) Koreans. At this point in time, we are not willing to allow our guard to drop even a little,” he said.
Commenting on the plan of action that paid off Saturday, Carvalho pointed out that he had managed to instil the feeling within the team to understand the importance of “retackling” and scoring of rebounds.
“We want as many all-rounders as there are. We began with the exercise of moulding Raghunath who can now play in any position. We are hungry for more like him,” Carvalho added.
For Malaysia Kevinder Singh Makbul scored thrice as did another Sikh Baljit Singh Sorjab.