India meet Belgium in hockey final

Auckland: A structured defence and clinical attack saw India beat host New Zealand 3-1 in the final round-robin match of the double-leg Four-Nation Invitational Hockey Tournament, at Blake Park in Tauranga near here on Saturday.

On Sunday India will take on Belgium, who beat Japan 4-1, in the final.India’s young brigade of Harmanpreet Singh (2nd minute), Dilpreet Singh (12th) and Mandeep Singh (47th) got the goals after the team's 0-2 loss to Belgium in the previous match.

India’s mantra was to play aggressive and that’s exactly what they did right from the start. Their first breakthrough came as early as the second minute when a circle entry fetched them a penalty-corner, created by Mandeep Singh.

Harmanpreet Singh who stepped up for the drag-flick was impeccable and fierce as he improvised the injection to flick the ball past New Zealand goalkeeper Richard Joyce.

The early goal undoubtedly put the Black Sticks on the backfoot. The next few minutes saw India hold their defence with Rupinder Pal Singh, who was rested for the match against Belgium, leading the charge of defenders as their man-to-man marking was spot on, not allowing New Zealand to make easy forays into India’s circle.

India colt Dilpreet Singh, who had scored two goals in his first outing for the national side, was impressive when he picked up an assist to put the ball past the New Zealand goal post in the 21st minute, taking India’s lead to a comfortable 2-0.

India held on to the lead with a well-rounded performance. Though India conceded a penalty-corner in the 42nd minute which was well-executed by New Zealand's Kane Russell, they did not drop the momentum and continued to attack swiftly and tactically.

In the 47th minute, Mandeep Singh was excellent in the circle to score an impressive goal to earn India a 3-1 score-line. I am particularly happy about today’s win because the team did a lot of analysing ahead of the match and their keenness to improve was evident," said chief coach Sjoerd Marijne.

On his thoughts about playing Belgium in the final, the 43-year-old Dutchman said, "This tournament is about improving our play and we already played a good match against a full-strength Belgium side so the final will be challenging too. But every match, this team has shown progress and had got better with performance, so in the final too we can expect a close contest."