India dominated in the first and second quarter with ball possession of 58 per cent
Defending champions and Olympic bronze-medalists India were held to a 2-2 draw by South Korea in their opening match of the Hero Asian Champions Trophy men's hockey tournament on Tuesday.
Playing their first match since the historic Tokyo Olympics campaign, India started with Lalit Upadhyay scoring the first goal in the 4th minute of the game. Later, Vice-captain Harmanpeet Singh scored a penalty corner in the 18th minute to double their lead.
The defending Champions Korea bounced back in the game after goals scored by Jonghyun Jung (41st min) and Sunghyun Kim (46th min).
Although it was India who dominated the proceedings in the first and second quarter with better ball possession (58 per cent) and a higher number of circle penetrations (14 for India and 8 for Korea), the Korean side rallied on a strong defensive structure in the third and fourth quarter to deny any opportunity for India to score.
Korean side grew confident as the game progressed.
Manpreet Singh was leading the Indian Hockey team they had several chances, including a penalty corner, but could not take advantage of the opportunity as the match ended in a draw.
Jaehyeon Kim the Korean goalkeeper was the difference between the two sides as he made numerous brilliant saves to help his side.
Post-match, Skipper Manpreet Singh expressed his disappointment but at the same time was confident the team would bounce back from this draw. "Korea was really good today with their defence and their goalkeeper was quite outstanding. We expected them to give us a hard time and hence it was important we started well.
But we couldn't keep up that momentum going into the third and fourth quarter. Nonetheless, this was the first match of the tournament and we surely will bounce back tomorrow against Bangladesh," stated the India Captain. The last match of both sides against each other also ended in a draw. India will next play against the hosts Bangladesh.
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