The Indian men's hockey team registered a sensational 10-2 victory over arch-rivals Pakistan in their Pool A clash on Saturday to continue their unbeaten Asian Games 2023 campaign in Hangzhou.
Mandeep Singh opened the scoring for India in the 8th minute of the first quarter before captain Harmanpreet Singh took over the proceedings with four goals in the match.
The skipper completed his hat-trick in the second half before adding his fourth in the third quarter. Varun Kumar netted a brace while Sumit, Shamsher Singh and Lalit Kumar Upadhyay were also on target for the Men in Blue.
Pakistan reduced the margin through Muhammad Khan (38th) and Abdul Rana (45th) as India toyed their opponents for large part of their penultimate pool match.
46 goals in 4 matches
India made it to the semi-finals with this win and now have scored a whopping 46 goals in four games with wins over Uzbekistan (16-0), Singapore (16-1), Japan (4-2) and Pakistan (10-2).
It is also the first time Pakistan conceded 10 goals against India out of the 180 hockey matches played between the two teams.
Record-breaking win for India
It's also India's biggest win over Pakistan in terms of goal margin in field hockey. India's earlier biggest victory margin was 7-1 against Pakistan registered in 2017.
India, thus, exacted revenge of that humiliating loss 41 years ago though Saturday's match.
India collected 12 points from four consecutive wins to stay on top of the pool. India will play Bangladesh on October 2 in their last Pool A match.
