India came up with a spirited performance drubbing Italy 5-0 in their second match of the Indira Gandhi International Gold Cup hockey tournament at the National Stadium in New Delhi, on Sunday.
Jasjeet Kaur, who was completely off colour and missed a penalty stroke on Saturday, was the star of the day scoring three goals for India, besides setting a brilliant piece for Saba Anjum.
After their lacklustre performance against Malaysia in the first match, the hosts pulled up their socks and the forward line came up with better sychronisation, especially in the second half of the match.
Before the break, the host were disorganised and faltered in front of goalmouth on a number of occasions but they came up with a much improved performance in the second half, scoring three goals in the last 13 minutes.
However, the Indian eves continued to miss penalty corners and failed to score in any of the seven that came their way .
Jasjeet scored from a free hit push by Subhadra Pradahan in the third minute of the match. The Indian forward line then made some promising moves in the next minutes but failed in execution.
Two penalty corners went abegging by India in the 13th and 31st minute of the match while Italy wasted one in the 17th minute. India went 1-0 into the breather.
The second half saw Indian forward line controlling the ball in a much better way and making some brilliant moves.
Chanu dribbled past Italy's defenders and pushed the ball to Mamta in the left flank whose cross rebounded off the goalie but Jasjeet was positioned at the right spot in front of the net and made no mistake to deflect the ball into the net.
A sharp move by Jasjeet in the 62nd minute took the Italian defenders by surprise. She showed fine control and pushed the ball between two players to Saba, who was just left to get past the goalie and she did it in style.
The Indian stepped up their offensive as the Italian team appeared exhausted in the last moments of the game. Saba, who scored a brace yesterday, deflected another ball into the net off a hit by Adline Kerketta in the 68th minute.
Jasjeet scored a brilliant last minute goal after trapping a push by Kerketta and hitting the board.
"We scored well in field goals but need to improve on penalty corner conversion. The forward line played well today," India's coach M K Kaushik said.
"India is a better team and we were also a bit tired in the last minutes of the game. We also did not score from the two penalty corners," said Italian coach Franco Nicola.
