India scrape past Japan 4-3, earn bronze medal play-off

Boom, Belgium, June 30 (UNI) Already out of contention, India scraped past Japan 4-3 in their last match to secure a bronze medal playoff in the Champions Challenge hockey tournament today.

With this win, India emerged third from the round-robin league with nine points from three wins and two losses.

India's opponents for the third/fourth play-off tomorrow will be decided by the match between England (3 points) and hosts Belgium (4 points).

Japan ended the tournament with three points from their 2-1 win against Belgium.

For India, Prabhjot Singh (21st and 34th) scored a brace while Sandeep Singh (7th) and Dilip Tirkey (48th) were the other scorers.

Kenichi Katayama (12th), Takahiko Yamabori (46th) and Ryuji Furusato (65th) found the target for Japan.

Earlier, Argentina and New Zealand played out a 3-3 draw to set up a title clash between them in the final tomorrow. The winner will qualify for the prestigious Champions Trophy With a final berth out of their reach and playing for pride, India began with a bang and in the seventh minute got a penalty corner from a foot fault inside the circle.

Sandeep Singh, who missed at least a dozen penalty corners against Argentina, essayed a cracking flick to the top right corner of the goal which left the Japanese defence without any chance to react.

Five minutes later, Sandeep's fine effort was cancelled out by poor marking in the defence and a diving Kenichi Katayama deflected in a long corner from the right.

Immediately thereafter, India got a penalty corner and then a few minutes later a half chance but wasted them.

But, India's consistent attacks paid off as Prabjhot Singh re-established the lead in the 21st minute by slamming home after Sandeep's penalty corner hit was rebounded from goalkeeper.

Prabjhot made the scoreline 3-1 one minute before the break by scoring a goal out of the blue. After collecting a long pass on the edge of the circle on the left side, he launched a blistering hit to the far side of the goal.

After the changeover, Japan pressed hard for goals but it was the Indians who did most of the attacking while their opponents relied mostly on counter attacks.

But, from one such counter attack, Japan scored their second goal after ten minutes into the second session via a penalty corner conversion by Takahiko Yamabori.

Dilip Tirkey paid back and scored from a well directed penalty corner hit two minutes later to make it 4-2.

With a two-goal cushion at their hands, the Indian's relaxed a bit and slowed down the pace of their game and Japan used the opportunity to bang in a goal five minutes from the final hooter via a field goal by Ryuji Furusato.

India won seven penalty corners from which they converted two while Japon got five from which they utilised one successfully.

UNI