Beat higher-ranked Australia 1-0 in quarter-finals
Raghav Kapoor | TNR
In a nail-biting encounter played at the OI seaside sports park, Japan the Indian women hockey team knocked out Australia and sealed their spot in the semi-finals after maintaining a 1-0 score-line in their favour.
This is being considered as a major upset as the Indian side were the clear underdogs going into the match and had finished 4th in pool A at the end group stages, meanwhile, Australia had topped pool B by scoring 13 goals and conceding just once in the five matches they played before the knockouts.
The lone goal of the match came from the stick of star drag-flicker, Gurjit Kaur in the second quarter as she managed to convert a penalty corner in the 22’ minute. After the match, she said that “it was a goal of the team”, not just hers.
“It was a belief in ourselves…we had huge pressure on ourselves in the last minutes but we kept calm,” she added.
The Indian side went into halftime with a lead of one goal. After the game resumed the Australian team put a lot of pressure in the 3rd and 4th quarter, testing the Indian defence in every possible manner but they remained fruitless, due to an enthralling performance by the goal-keeper Savita Punia who made startling saves throughout the match and stood unbeaten after 60 minutes.
Australia’s High Commissioner to India Barry O’Farrell Monday congratulated the Indian women’s hockey team after it entered the Olympics semi-final for the first time. He called goalkeeper Savita Punia the ‘Great Wall of India’ and said she “could not be beaten”.
“It was a tough hockey match, but your defence held out until the end,” Many even compared this performance to the iconic movie ‘Chak De! India’ which was based on a similar theme.
Notably, this is the best performance by the women hockey team at the Olympics considering they have played in only 3 editions (1980 Moscow, 2016 Rio being the other two).
