The Indian men’s hockey team started its campaign at the Commonwealth Games with a win against Ghana on July 31. Team India won their first match by 11-0. This is India’s biggest win in the history of Commonwealth Games. Harmanpreet Singh, playing his 150th international match, scored a hat-trick of goals in this match, while Jugraj Singh scored two goals. India scored 3 goals in the first quarter, 2 in the second quarter, 4 in the third quarter and 2 goals in the fourth quarter. India’s next match is against hosts England on 1 August.
Did not even give Ghana chance to recover
The Indian team did not even give Ghana a chance to recover in this mismatch as expected. The Indian team got 13 penalty corners in the match, out of which six were scored. Vice-captains Harmanpreet Singh (11th, 35th and 53rd) and Jugraj Singh (22nd and 43rd) besides Abhishek (2nd), Shamsher Singh (14th), Nilakanta Sharma (38th), Akashdeep Singh (20th), Varun Kumar (39th) and Mandeep Singh (48th) also scored.
In this match, the Ghanaian striker could hardly penetrate the Indian goal. Ghana got five penalty corners but failed to score a goal. India got their first penalty corner in the very first minute of the match and Abhishek converted it on a rebound. Ten minutes later, Harmanpreet doubled India’s lead by scoring a penalty corner.
A brilliant move from Abhishek and Lalit Upadhyay was converted into a goal by Shamsher to make the score 3-0. Akashdeep scored the fourth goal in the 20th minute. Two minutes later, Jugraj converted a penalty corner.
In the fifth minute of the second half, Harmanpreet scored the second goal from the penalty corner. Three minutes later, Nilakanta scored on the rebound when Jarmanpreet Singh’s first shot was saved by the Ghanaian goalkeeper. The very next minute Varun Kumar converted a penalty corner. Jugraj scored his second goal from the penalty corner. Mandeep and Harmanpreet scored a goal each in the last quarter.
