India defeated Pakistan today 5-1 in a no contest tie at the 25th Sultan Azlan Shah Cup at Ipoh, Malaysia. In a round-robin league match, India scored their biggest win over the arch-rivals. The goal scorers for India were SV Sunil (2), Manpreet, Talwinder & Rupinderpal Singh a piece while Md Irfan scored the lone goal for Pakistan.
India started the game with attacking mindset, and in the 4th minute of the game was the first goal, where Manpreet Singh gathered a pass from SV Sunil to fire a reverse hit into the Pakistan goal.
It didn’t take Pakistan long to score an equalizer when Md. Irfan scored off a penalty corner to bring back some air of relief to Pakistan.
This score was not to stay long as India charged straight back up and it was the duo from the first goal at the center of it again, reversing roles for India’s second. Manpreet drilled a shot in from the top of the circle, and Sunil evading his markers, produced a brilliant deflection to direct the ball into the net. The first ten minutes had three goals, and India led again 2-1. After this there was no looking back from India. India went into half time with scorecard reading 2-1 in their favor.
Pakistan started off strongly in the second half and a green card to Rupinder Pal Singh meant that with the man advantage, they could do the damage. And then Manpreet suffered an injury to be helped off the field. The injury though wasn’t serious as Manpreet came back on later in the game. India’s defense held fort, denying Pakistan any clear chances on goal. Just when there was four minutes left in the third quarter, Sunil scored his second of the match off a Thimmaiah pass to go into the break with 3-1 up.
Coming from the break, India didn’t allow any chances to arch-rivals as they made it completely one-sided wherein they had 10 penetrations in the opponent’s D and held 64% of the possession.
And then came the other two goals: first scored by Talwinder Singh who took a SK Uthappa cross in the 50th minute to hit into the Pakistan’s goal, before Rupinder added another, converting a PC in the 54th minute to make it 5-1.
India could score more, as Imran Butt saved a stroke off Rupinder Pal Singh, before Ramandeep Singh’s deflected goal was disallowed with two minutes left in the game.
With this win, India stay at second position on the points table.
India next play New Zealand at 13:35 pm IST tomorrow, 13th April, 2016.