India beat Pakistan 4-3 in the Asian Champions Trophy tournament in Hockey being played in Bangladesh. Defending champions India lost the semi-final to Japan 3-5 on Tuesday. Team India were an overwhelming favourites before the start of the match but Japan were better prepared.
India and Pakistan played neck-and-neck after India took the lead in opening stage of the match. However, Pakistan, too, caught up and the first half ended with 1 goal each for both arch rivals. In second half, Pakistan started off by making the first goal, but soon India too scored a goal and both countries were on two goals each.
With seven minutes remaining in the match, India took the lead when Varun Kumar scored off a penalty corner. Soon, Hardik Singh got himself a yellow card, costing team India 5 more minutes. With the team reduced to 10 players, India got one more advantage after Akashdeep scored a goal. However, Pakistan’s Ahmed Nadeem, too, scored a goal taking the neighbour country’s goal tally to 3. With little over one minute left in the game, India’s Sumit Singh, too got a yellow card. Now Team India was two players down.
However, despite having an advantage of two more players than their Indian counterpart, Pakistan could not capitalise and the game ended with India winning the match. Indian captain Manpreet Singh has been named the player of the match.
