India were not at their best but still proved to be far too good for a Russian team that played with great heart but went down 7-1 in Game 2 on Saturday.
World No 5 India combined with their Game 1 scoreline (4-2), won with an aggregate score of 11-3 to seal a Tokyo 2020 spot. The win looks comfortable but Game 1 was anything but that and head coach Graham Reid will know that there is a lot of room to improve.
Alexey Sobolevskiy’s goal which came just 22 seconds after the start got the match off to a cracking start.
It took India a while to get going after the first goal by Russia but once they did Russia could do little but defend. In 12 minutes, the hosts fired off three goals starting with Lalit Upadhyay’s superb deflection.
Then, Akashdeep Singh pounced on a rebound after a penalty corner to increase the lead to 2-1 and then six minutes later, the forward came up with a wonderful individual goal to put the tie beyond the tiring Russians.
The third quarter went goalless but India struck again early in the fourth quarter.
In the 47th minute, Nilakanta Sharma received the ball just outside the circle, he took it in and let loose with a powerful shot into the top left of the goal.
Rupinder Pal Singh followed up with his first goal of the tie with a powerful flick that beat the Russian goalkeeper for pace. And then, a few minutes later, the sixth goal, Rupinder’s second, followed in a similar fashion.
In the final minute of the match, Amit Rohidas converted the penalty corner with ease to stamp India’s ticket to the Olympics.
Russia finally buckled in the fourth quarter and let in four goals as India ran rampant. The final scoreline doesn’t tell you how well the visitors competed through the tie.
India were a lot better on Saturday than they were in Game 1 but they still seemed to be trying too hard to put on a show. The hosts were faster and clearly more skilled and they really needed to do little more than keep things simple.
And when they finally got down to doing that, they were unstoppable.
