Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 8 (IANS) India swept to a 7-0 win against the hapless Trinidad and Tobago to keep their semi-final hopes alive in the women’s hockey competition at the Commonwealth Games here Friday.

The win is the first in three matches. The team has four points as they drew one match. The women will have to beat South Africa also by a huge margin in their last league match to advance to the medal rounds.

Friday’s victory notwithstanding, the Indian women could hardly be pleased with their overall performance, especially inside the striking circle where they wasted far too many chances.

Topping the scorers’ list for India, who led 4-0 at the break, was skipper Surinder Kaur with a haul of four goals, followed by Ritu Rani, Rani Rampal and Jasjeet Kaur.

India took little time to settle down and were in full flow with Rampal setting up the first two goals by Surinder Kaur and Ritu Rani by the 14th minute.

Clearly, the Caribbean champions were out of depth and the Indians enjoyed a free run while hardly under threat themselves.

A third goal by Ritu Rani was first upheld and then annulled by the technical table on an infringement outside the circle that both umpires failed to notice.

But it made little difference as India scored twice more in the last five minutes of the first-half. Surinder scored off a penalty corner and then Rani Rampal, the youngest player in the side, capped the session with a goal.

India’s dominance continued unchecked in the second-half. They began with a goal by Surinder who got to a deflection off a defender’s stick inside the circle to score.

Trinidad and Tobago showed sparks of resistance and even launched a few counter attacks, one of which resulted in a penalty corner that, however, was abortive.

At the other end, India kept creating chances and missing until Surinder dived headlong to deflect Jasjeet Kaur’s penalty corner drive for the sixth goal.

Two minutes from close, Jasjeet slammed home the 11th penalty corner to complete the day’s scoring for India.