India rout Thailand 16-0 to register all win record in league

Chennai, Sep 6 (UNI) In what was their best performance in recent times, defending champions India finished their league outings in Pool B with an all win record, routing Thailand 16-0 in their last pool match in the seventh Asia Cup hockey tournament at the astro turf stadium here today.

Much to the delight of chief coach Joachim Carvalho, India, who sailed into the semi-finals with their fourth straight win in the league downing Bangladesh afer their rousing win against Asian giants Korea, capped a fine run garnering 15 points from five matches in the six team pool.

In their awefully one sided match against Thailand, India scored through Raghunath who slammed in six goals, all penalty corner conversions, the last one in the 56th minute, Prabhjot Singh(3), Rajpal Singh(3), Tushar Khandekar(2), S V Sunil(1) and Gurbaz Singh(1). The Thais lost all their matches in the league phase.

Earlier, Japan and Korea qualified for the last four stage from Pool A and Pool B, resepctively. Korea in Pool B beat Bangladesh 8-0 while Japan outplayed Singapore by a similar margin in Pool A, pushing Pakistan out.

After the second rest day tomorrow, the semi-finals will be played on Saturday with India taking on Japan and Korea crossing swords with Malaysia.

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