The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : China, S. Korea, Japan sparkle

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Sunday, Dec 03, 2006
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Sport - Hockey

China, S. Korea, Japan sparkle

S. Thyagarajan

Doha: At the women's hockey competition at the Al Rayan Complex here on Saturday, champion outfits, China, defending the gold, South Korea, former champion and Japan, making a strong bid to be counted as an elite combination scored among themselves 24 goals to advertise the intensity that is going to develop as the event progresses in the Asian Games.

The opposition, save for Malaysia, cannot be spoken of as competitors at this level in the real sense of the term.

Quite predictably, China demolished Hong Kong (China) by a whopping 9-0 margin while South Korea beat Chinese Taipei by eight goals to nil.

Best show

On the day's showing therefore, Japan's 7-0 win should be reckoned as the best.

In recent years, Malaysia has emerged as a serious contender that was reflected in the team's performance at the last Commonwealth Games at Melbourne.

But Japan, which is the only Asian combination figuring in the next month's Champions Trophy in Argentina, smashed what little resistance that the Malaysians could offer.

This was largely on account of the competence demonstrated by the team's trump card, Kaori Chiba, who performed outstandingly in the last World Cup at Madrid. She netted three goals.

China's demolition of Hong Kong was nothing to be portrayed as an enormously excellent performance, nor should one give much weight to the Korean assault on Chinese Taipei, one of the qualifiers this time.

The results:

China 9 (Z. Chen 3, C. May, Y. Ren, Hi Li, Q. Chen, L. Gao, C. Tang) bt Hong Kong, China 0; Japan 7 (K. Chiba 3, M. Ozawa 2, S. Iwao, T. Tsukui) bt Malaysia 0; South Korea 8 (M.H. Park 2, E.Y. Choi 2, N.Y. Kang, T.J. Han 2, Y.S. Park) bt Chinese Taipei 0.

Sunday's matches: Women: Hong Kong v Malaysia (2.30 p.m.); Japan v Korea (5.30 p.m.); India v Chinese Taipei (7.30 p.m.).

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