MADRID, March 9: India as good as qualified for the Athens Olympics with a 6-4 win over Canada on Tuesday but must wait until the end of the day to be sure they have gained second place in Pool B of the men's Olympic qualifying field hockey tournament.
India drew level on 10 points with Pakistan who played New Zealand in the last match of the day. India are likely to play Netherlands in the semifinals, barring a major upset between Pakistan and New Zealand.
Deepak Thakur grabbed a hattrick with the other goals coming from Arjun Halappa, Dilip Tirkey and Ignace Tirkey. But India had to rouse themselves after letting a 5-0 lead slip away as Canada fought back to pull back to 5-4 with two minutes to play.
India found space early in the first half as Canada tried to press forward in numbers but exposed their backfield to attack from turnovers in midfield. Deepak Thakur stole possession in India's half and ran to Canada's circle to fire a backstick shot along the carpet past Jon MacKinnon in goal for the first of his hat-trick.
Arjun Halappa scored India's second two minutes later from a similar tournover in midfield. MacKinnon stopped two shots from Gagan Ajit Singh and Baljit Singh Dhillon before Halappa took the second rebound wide to the right of goal and drove in past MacKinnon.
Canada's defence committed simple errors to concede two penalty corners to India and Dilip Tirkey converted the second chance with a drive into the right. Canada continued to play attacking hockey and gained two penalty corners from tackling errors by Kanwalpreet Singh. Rob Short hit the right upright with his first shot and his second shot went wide.
Deepak scored either side of the break to complete his hat-trick. A high cross-field pass from right to left found Ignace Tirkey free and his pass in to the centre gave Deepak an open goal to drive into.
After the break Deepak stole possession in midfield to exchange passes with Gagan to get free in the circle and receive Gagan's pass and push into an empty goal.India lost concentration when leading 5-0 and started to make mistakes.
Canada capitalised with two goals to Sean Campbell, a penalty stroke by Rob Short and a penalty corner conversion by Paul Wettlaufer, and India looked shaky at 5-4 with two minutes to play.
India regrouped and scored again when Ignace Tirkey flicked a shot high from the left backline where it deflected off Canada's defence into goal in the last minute to give India the win 6-4.
India's coach, Rajinder Singh, believes the pressure to qualify has affected his players. "Needing to qualify at this tournament has been upsetting for the players from the very start of the tournament," Rajinder said.
"Canada went all-out to win and they put our deep defence under pressure and we made mistakes and that pressure lead to the goals against us today," he added. "We had a draw with Belgium in the first match but now we are clear of that pressure and we can play good games in the next two matches," Rajinder said. -AFP
Canada 4 India 6
Japan 3 The Netherlands 9
Belgium 2 Malaysia 1
South Africa 0 Britain 6