CWG Hockey: India falls to Oz; settles for silver

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New Delhi, Oct 14: Conceding to Australia 8-0 in the hockey finals, India on Thursday, Oct 14 settled for a silver medal at the Delhi Commonwealth Games.

The World Champions, packed with defence, attacks and counter-attacks, coordination and team work, and excellent game tactics, proved too much for the hosts to handle in a one-sided match.

Indians did manage to dominate the game in the first 20 minutes of the match and it all went downhill from there.

Australia was leading 4-0 at half time, but the home crowd did not lose heart keeping in the mind the way the team had turned it around in the semifinals to win 5-4 in a penalty shootout after coming up from 3-1 down and scoring an equaliser 3-3 against England.

However, the fast and aggressive defending champions continued their pace and dished out a 8-0 defeat to grab the Gold.

Indians can take away one constructive lesson from this loss - work on penalty corners. Even though India got first penalty corner, it failed to convert it; Australians, on the other hand, converted almost every penalty corner into goals.

With this victory, Australia is wrapping up the year with a hat-trick victories following World Cup and the Champions Trophy.

For India, there is still a reason to rejoice as this is the first Commonwealth Games silver medal in the country's history.

OneIndia News