Indian men scrape past Wales

India was pushed to dig out by Wales before chalking up its first win in two matches in men’s hockey of the XXI Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast hockey centre here on Sunday.

The Pool B game, despite the domination shown by the Indians in building up attacks and controlling the ball, was still a touch-and-go affair before it was decided 4-3 in favour of India.

The Welsh were in no way disgraced as they staged a comeback each and every time India surged ahead until the issue was finally settled in the very last minute.

After a barren quarter, India opened up with a beauty of a goal scored by Dilpreet Singh, slamming home a perfect pass from S.V. Sunil. However, the Welsh restored parity in the very next minute through a penalty-corner conversion by Gareth Furlong.

Furlong was to torment the Indians twice more as he brought his side back into the match after India regained the lead through Mandeep Singh in 28th minute and thereafter when Hamanpreet Singh looked as if he had nailed the match in the favour of his side in the 57th minute.

Naturally, the Indian camp as well as its supporters were tense before the side, through a video referral, gained a penalty corner and got the winning goal through Sunil who was quick to dart in, collect the ball on the rebound and score.

Aggressive match

Earlier in the morning, Indian women put behind their bad start against Wales and unconvincing display over Malaysia to shock World No. 2 and Olympic champion England.

It was an aggressive match all through but the Indians held their nerve in style before coming up with a brilliant 2-1 victory.

The results:

Men: Pool B: India 4 (Dilpreet Singh 16, Mandeep Singh 28, Harmanpreet Singh 57, S.V. Sunil 59) bt Wales 3 (Gareth Furlong 17, 45, 58).

Women: Pool A: India 2 (Navneet Kaur 42, Gurjit Kaur 48) bt England 1 (Alexendra Danson 1).