DOHA: 0-0. Perhaps the last scoreline that anyone watching a game of football would want at the end of the day.But not for every India fan keyed into his/her team’s fate at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium in Doha on Tuesday night.
The score read 0-0, but this 0-0 was spreading on social media like wildfire, each Tweet fuelling the growing adulation for what the Men in Blue had achieved after straining every sinew and muscle in their tiring bodies for 94 energy-sapping minutes. They’d held Asian Champions Qatar in their second Group E match of the 2022 World Cup and 2023 AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers. Even without a talismanic Sunil Chhetri, who couldn’t turn out for this clash due to a viral infection, goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu led from the front to take India to one of their most significant results in recent history.
In the first half, India were willing to stay back and absorb the pressure; preferring to play the waiting game. Even as the Asian champions came out all guns blazing and created many opportunities and threatened to take the lead, captain Sandhu lived up to his moniker of “Spiderman”, defying both gravity and the numerous attempts that Qatar’s front-liners made on the Indian goal.