New Delhi: The Indian women’s hockey team continued its winless run in the European leg of the FIH Pro League after losing their 7th consecutive match on Saturday. India slumped once again against China going down in the encounter 0-3 and possibly staring at a relegation from the tournament.
After the embarrassing defeat, India are on the bottom position in the nine team standings with 10 points from 15 games. England are placed a position ahead of India with 11 points from 14 matches. They will be playing Germany in back-to-back matches on the next day and if they win against the Germans, India will be at the bottom of the standings and relegated from the FIH Pro League to FIH Nations Cup
If the English team does not manage to beat Germany and they win, India will have to beat China on Sunday to keep their place intact in the Pro League. In a tricky situation for the Indian team, they would be hoping that the Germans beat the English side and they in turn are able to beat China on Sunday.
Meanwhile, China took an early lead in the game with Chen Yang (21st minute) scoring the first goal and Zhang Ying (26th) scored from penalty corners, following up with a lead of 2-0. Anhul Yu, in the 45th minute, found the target from a field effort for China to make the score line 3-0 while the Indians failed to break the Chines defence.
Though India made a bright start and some good circle penetrations in the first quarter but that was not enough to help them stay active in the match and score some points as they were unable to score any goals.
Baljeet Kaur had the first real chance of the match but her shot from the top of the circle in the third minute went wide. A minute later, India secured two-back-to-back first penalty corners but Deepika failed on both the occasions. China got their acts together soon and earned their first penalty corner a minute later but India defended well.
(With PTI inputs)
