00:00Hello and welcome to ITGD Sports and this is me, Alan John.
00:04So today we are here at Rajgir and the celebration that is the Asia Cup has kickstarted and what a day it was.
00:15It was an absolutely sensational day.
00:18Rajgir turned up in its full force, full tashan as everyone would say.
00:24And we got to see an absolute thrilling fest between India and China.
00:30But before we get to India and China, let's start with the first match, right?
00:34Malaysia versus Bangladesh, a 4-1 match where Malaysia were supposed to, you know, kind of dominate proceedings and they did.
00:42The position was good. They were attacking. They were constantly making circle penetrations.
00:46But it was Bangladesh who got the first goal. And then Malaysia had to bounce back from that.
00:52Next up, we had our defending champions, Korea against Chinese Taipei.
00:58Now, everyone expected the result to be 7-0, but it was not that easy for Korea at first.
01:05Chinese Taipei did give them a strong push in the first quarter at least.
01:11They kept them at bay. And once Korea started scoring, they just did not stop.
01:17It just went on and on. And in the last quarter, third quarter, they were not able to score a lot.
01:23But in the last quarter, they were able to score four goals, which was the biggest margin of win today.
01:31Well, sort of. It is the tide biggest margin of win today.
01:35Because Japan were all over Kazakhstan. And they defeated them, trashed them 7-0.
01:42Japan are in India's group and that is now going to be a big fixture for India going forward, which they will be playing next.
01:51Japan looks to be in very good form, but mostly Kazakhstan's defense was very, very susceptible today.
01:58They made a lot of schoolboy-ish errors, which will get punished against big top teams.
02:05Now, let's come to India versus China. The moment that we have all waited for, right?
02:10The Indian team, it's kind of been an indifferent season for them.
02:14The Hockey Pro League did not go their way. This is their last chance for making it to the World Cup.
02:19So, what was the good? Well, the good was for India, they won 4-3. That is a big, big advantage.
02:27They have got the three points at the end of the day, which the coach and the players will be happy about.
02:33And the other one was to see the penalty corner conversion.
02:36We have got four goals, they are all penalty corners and Captain Harmanpreet stepped up to the plate, scoring a hat-trick, a wonderful hat-trick.
02:46And he got some support from Jugaraj Singh as well.
02:49Now, what are the bad aspects? Like, it's a performance that was a very, very thrilling one.
02:56It was a 4-3 performance.
02:59The bad aspects is that there seems to be still that a little bit of problem from our Hockey Pro League.
03:06If you watch closely, we lost seven of the eight matches and most of them were by one goal.
03:11And it all came down to India letting the lead slip.
03:14That's the same thing that happened here today.
03:16They were 3-1 up, then they let the lead slip.
03:20Then we had Harmanpreet missing a penalty stroke, but he made up for it.
03:23He got the hat-trick at the end of the day, which was the deciding factor.
03:27But going against teams like Korea, Japan, Malaysia, probably India cannot afford this mistake.
03:37And that is one of the main talking points here.
03:39The goalkeeping performance also, Krishan Pathak considered three goals.
03:44He seemed to be a little bit shaky, but obviously I feel that the performances are going to get better as we progress.
03:53Now, India's next opponent is going to be Japan.
03:56And that is going to be in two days' time.
03:58So, we will be here.
04:00We will be covering from Rajgir.
04:03And tomorrow also, we will come with the same episode.
04:07Until then, this is Alan John signing off for India Today's Digital.
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