Indian men sweat for 4-3 win over Wales

Gold Coast: S.V. Sunil’s late goal helped India’s men’s hockey team overcome a lower-ranked Wales with a 4-3 win in a Pool B match of the 21st Commonwealth Games (CWG) here on Sunday.

Wales’ drag-flicker Gareth Furlong’s hat-trick had threatened India and the latter was on the verge of playing second consecutive draw after the Pakistan tie. But Sunil scored off a rebound from a penalty corner with around two minutes to go.

Furlong’s all goals were equalisers for their teams. His first goal came a minute after Dilpreet Singh’s field goal, a drive from the right in the 16th minute, gave India the lead.

India regained the lead through Mandeep Singh’s tap-in off a penalty corner rebound in the 27th minute. Wales took 17 minutes to come up with the equaliser via Furlong, who exposes India’s shortcomings in defending the set-piece.

Harmanpreet Singh scored in his fourth penalty corner attempt in the 56th minute to give India the 3-2 lead with four minutes left for the end of the game. But Furlong struck again past P.R. Sreejesh to make it 3-3 in the following minute. India once again lost composure and focus after scoring a goal which allowed Wales to launch a speedy counter-attack to earn a penalty corner which was poorly defended by Sreejesh and his defence.

However, a minute later Wales, failed to fully clear Harmanpreet’s drag-flick. Sunil’s first attempt was blocked but he got hold of the ball again before hitting at the empty right post to make it 4-3.

“I am happy with the win but not with our performance because we can do so much better than this. Though we were a better team today compared to our first match against Pakistan, we need to play our A game against Malaysia if we want to see ourselves in the Semi Final,” said Indian chief coach Sjoerd Marijne.