India thrashed Japan 5-0 in the Asian Champions Trophy semifinal at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Hockey Stadium in Chennai on Friday (August 11). While the first quarter was a goalless one, India scored at least a goal in each of the other three quarters as they went on to dominate the match. The second quarter was where they took massive strides towards a win, sealing a 3-0 lead in the first half. The result implies India will now play the final against Malaysia at the same venue on Saturday (August 12).
It all started with Akashdeep Singh netting a field goal in the 19th minute of the match to give India lead. Minutes later Harmanpreet Singh, one of the best drag flickers in the world, doubled India's lead when he scored with the clock showing 23'. The final goal of the second quarter was netted by Mandeep Singh who also scored a field goal in the 30th minute.
It was in the third quarter that one witnessed one of the contenders of the goal of the tournament with Sumit finding the back of the net with a reverse flick. Manpreet provided the assist much like how had provided to Mandeep for the earlier goal. The final goal of the match was scored by Karthi Selvam which rounded a high-scoring day at the Asian Champions Trophy. Malaysia had beaten Korea 6-2 to first enter the finals while Pakistan also defeated China 6-1 in the match that helped them finish fifth.
All is not over for the teams that lost the semis as they will have to compete in the third place fixture which will be played along with the final on the same date-August 12 (Saturday). This implies that the lineup on the last day of the tournanment will be Korea vs Japan (third place match) and India vs Malaysia (Final). The positive thing for India would be that they had beaten Malaysia 5-0 when the teams squared off in the round-robin stage.