Johor Bahru: The Indian junior men’s hockey team on Wednesday decimated USA 22-0 in a thoroughly one-sided contest to register their third consecutive victory in the Sultan of Johor Cup 2017 in Malaysia.
For India, there were ten different goal-scorers in the form of Dilpreet Singh
Harmanjit Singh , Abhishek and Vishal Antil who scored hat-tricks. Harmanjit topped the scoring charts with five goals, Abhishek found the back of the net four times and Dilpreet and Vishal scored three goals each. Two goals came from Maninder Singh while Shilanand Lakra, Vivek Prasad, Raushan Kumar, Pratap Lakra, Rabichandra Moirangthem scored one goal each.
USA failed to find the back of the net for even once and this is not only their third defeat on the trot but a third hammering defeat, if one has to describe their campaign in the tournament so far.
Earlier, they were pummeled 19-0 by Australia while they were handed a sound beating by a 11-0 margin at the hands of England. In all the three matches, they’ve played so far, they’ve conceded a whopping 52 goals without scoring a single one.
India, on the flip side continued their fine run in the tournament and this huge win over USA would undoubtedly be a big boost to their chances of making it to the next stage. In their campaign opener, they had outplayed Japan 3-2 while they got the better of hosts Malasyia in their second match.
The Indian colts would next face Australia on Thursday and would Great Britain on Saturday, in their final league match.
This has truly been a productive period for Indian hockey as the senior team, just few days back claimed the Asia Cup for the third time in history.