\nMuscat, 31 Jan: Sushila Chanu scored a brace as the Indian women’s hockey team made a grand debut at the FIH Pro League, hammering China 7-1 in the first game of the two-leg tie here on Monday.
\nChanu (47th, 52nd minutes) converted two penalty strokes while Navneet Kaur (5th), Neha (12), Vandana Katariya (40th), Sharmila Devi (48th) and Gurjit Kaur (50th) netted one each to hand India a convincing win.
\nChina’s lone goal was scored from a field effort by Xue Deng in the 43rd minute.
\nWith the win, the Indian women’s hockey team moved to the third position in the FIH Pro League points table, with three points and a goal difference of plus six.
\nThe Indians got off to a flier when Navneet found the net from inside the circle in the fifth minute.
\nIndia controlled the pace of the match from there on, but a rare circle penetration from China in the 10th minute earned them the first penalty corner of the match but skipper Savita was up to the task in front of the goal to thwart the danger.
\nThe Indians kept up the pressure of the Chinese goal and were rewarded with their second goal in the 12th minute when Neha doubled the lead with a close-range strike.
\nIndia continued in the same vein in the second quarter and and created a flurry of chances but failed in execution to go into the breather leading 2-0.
\nAfter the change of ends, India extended their margin through Vandana.
\nTrailing 0-3, the Chinese pulled one back three minutes later with Deng slamming one in from the right side.
\nThe fourth and final quarter, however, was completely dominated by the Indians as they pumped in as many as four goals with Chanu converting two penalty strokes.
\nIndia will play China again on Tuesday at the same venue. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Muscat, 31 Jan: Sushila Chanu scored a brace as the Indian women’s hockey team made a grand debut at the FIH Pro League, hammering China 7-1 in the first game of the two-leg tie here on Monday. Chanu (47th, 52nd minutes) converted two penalty strokes while Navneet Kaur (5th), Neha (12), Vandana Katariya (40th), Sharmila […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-182966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}