A spectacular Indian team made a stunning comeback from being three-goal down to beat Poland 6-4 in a pulsating final to clinch the inaugural Hero FIH Hockey 5s championship on Sunday in Lausanne. India won the gold in an all new format. The team consisted of Gurinder Singh, Sumit, Boby Singh Dhami, Rabichandra Singh, Mohammed Raheel, Pawan, Gursahibjit Singh, Sanjay and Mandeep Mor.
Hockey 5s, first played at the time of preparation for the 2014 Youth Olympic Games, is a super-fast, highly skillful, short format of hockey that is designed to be adaptable to multiple surfaces, spaces, and environments. Hockey 5s is an invasion game that is played between two teams with 4 field players and a goalkeeper on the field. As the name itself suggests, Hockey 5s is a hockey variation that features five players on each team (including a goalkeeper). The field of play is also 55 m long and 41.70 m wide which is approximately half the size of a regular hockey pitch.
India, who had already topped the five-team league standings with three wins and one draw enroute final, ended this campaign with an unbeaten record.
This was India’s second win on the same day over the same opponents. India had beaten Poland, who had finished second with two wins earlier and as many losses, 6-2 in their round-robin league match three and half hours earlier in the day.
The Indian women’s team, however, failed to make it to the final after drawing 4-4 with South Africa in the second match after beating the hosts Switzerland 4-3 earlier in the day. The Indian women would have entered the final match if they had beaten South Africa by a margin of two goals. The team finished fourth in the five-team standings with four points from one win, one draw and two losses.
Bobby Singh Dhami (11′, 19′), Mohammed Raheel (13′, 17′), Sanjay (8′) and the skipper Gurinder Singh (9′) scored the goals for the country. Raheel finished as the top goalscorer in the Hero FIH Hockey 5s tournament.
Playing their 3rd match of the day, the Indians were left stunned after Poland scored three goals without reply in the first five minutes of play through Mateusz Nowakowski (1st), Wojciech Rutkowski (5th) and captain Robert Pawlak (5th). Poland played just 1 match on Sunday before the final against India’s two.
The Indians led 3-2 at the half time in the 20-minute hockey match. India completely dominated the match against their opponents Poland, surging to a 5-0 lead at half time through goals from Sanjay (2nd), Raheel (4th and 9th), Gursahibjit Singh (7th) and Mandeep Mor (10th).
Earlier, India had first outplayed Malaysia 7-3, pumping in four goals in the second half in a stunning show before beating Poland.
