India will take on Korea in the final of the Azlan Shah Cup hockey tournament on Sunday.
By S.Thyagarajan
An absorbing Saturday's program kept everyone in the stadium on the seat's edge as Australia, Korea, Pakistan battling it out for a place in the final watched move by move by the Malaysians who had an outside chance.
India had to win against Egypt to ensure its place and it accomplished it with a 7-1 margin, thanks to a hat-trick by the defender Dhananjaya Mahadik.
This is India's sixth final in the competition, having won it four times, and going down to Argentina in 2008 final.
The young Australian squad had to win by a four goal margin and it did that perfectly against China to keep the Malaysians guessing about their place in the final.
Then torrid match between Korea and Pakistan followed. Both required a two goal margin to hit the final spot. Two penalty strokes helped the Koreans crossed the hurdle and eventually win by four goals to two.
But the Pakistanis were unimpressed by the second penalty stroke award by Irish umpire McCully and bullied him when four minutes remained from close.
Play was stopped nearly for quarter of an hour until the TD, Paul Richards from South Africa intervened. By that time, skipper Muhammad Imran was given all the three cards-green, yellow and red- and when the match resumed the umpire whipped up a red for Aamir Shafzad.
Pakistan's manager, Kwaja Junaid expressed his disappointment over the quality of supervision in the match and blamed it as contributing to all the tension and drama.
The results:
Australia 4 (Kirean Govers 2, Christopher Cirello, Grant Schubert) beat China 0; HT 2-0.
Korea 4 (Lee Nam Yong 2, Nam Hyun Woo 2) beat Pakistan 2(Zubair Muhammad, Imran Muhammad) HT 1-1.
India 7(Dhananjaya Mahadik 3, hat-trick, Rajpal Singh, Rupinderpal Singh, Tushar Khandekar, Sarvanjit Singh) beat Egypt 1 (Halim Ahmed) HT 1-0
The final points table:
India: Played 6, Won 4, Drawn 1, Lost 1, Goals for 21, Goals against 14, Points 13: Korea 6-3-2-1-20-11-11; Australia 6-3-2-1-20-12-11; Malaysia 6-3-2-1-17-9-11; Pakistan 6-2-2-24-20-8; China 6-1-1-4-12-19-4; Egypt 6-0-0-6-4-33-0.
Sunday's matches: (5-6) Pakistan v China;; (3-4) Australia v Malaysia .FINAL: India v Korea.
