CHENNAI: These are heady days for hockey in the country. Since August, all four of the country’s principal hockey sides (seniors and juniors in both men and women) have now reached the semifinals of both global events (Olympics and junior World Cup) they have featured in. On Friday, the junior women’s side had no problems in easing past South Korea to advance to the last four of the quadrennial event that was original slated for December but was postponed because of Covid Omicron variant.
The scoreline — 3-0 — did not flatter Salima Tete & Co. one bit. If anything, India didn’t really have to move out of first gear for a vast majority of the 60 minutes at Potchefstroom. Coming into the game, Korea’s gameplan wasn’t going to be a secret. At the pre-match press conference, vice-captain, Ishika Chaudhary, was so confident she even referenced Korea’s strategy. “Speed has been our advantage and Korea is a team who can slow their opponent down,” she had said. “This is something we will be conscious about and we will try to work our way around it and focus on creating space.”
This, in essence, was going to decide the fate of the game. In the end, though, it was over as a contest before the beginning of the second quarter. As advertised by Ishika, they used pace, created multiple openings and frequently got behind the Korean defence. They were also clinical in front of goal, something they failed to do the last time these two sides met, albeit at the senior level. At the Asia Cup early this year, South Korea had edged India 3-2 in the semifinals.
From the moment Mumtaz Khan profited from a clever deflection from the opening penalty corner, it was going to be a question of how many. For Korea, coming into the game, had only scored once in the entirety of the group stage. To be fair to them, they tried to inject some pace and urgency to their game — it doesn’t come naturally to them — when they were trailing 0-2 but India always maintained control.
A third goal by Sangita Kumari, who slapped the ball into the roof of the net from close range, allowed them to conserve energy before Sunday’s semifinal.