BHUBANESWAR: The Indian men's hockey team came back from their opening loss in style to beat Spain 2-0 in the FIH Pro League on Sunday.
Mandeep Singh and Dilpreet Singh scored as Spain failed to take advantage of Harmanpreet Singh's absence with India's talismanic skipper rested due to wrist injury.
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The Indian women's team, however, couldn't continue their winning run and it was England who grabbed the bonus point after the match finished 2-2 after 60 minutes.
Savita Punia did everything she could to make sure India won the shootouts, making four successive saves. All the Indian attackers had to do was convert one of their four shots after Navneet Kaur scored the first one.
But Salima Tete, Sunelita Toppo, Lalremsiami, and Neha all failed to hit the target. It went to sudden death after England converted their last shot; even here Savita made a save but India missed both their chances and Sophie Hamilton scored the winner to help England grab the bonus point.
Coach Harendra Singh was all praise for Savita but rued missing out on the bonus point. "It was frustrating because we had to score only one. But this is also part of the game. I'm happy we still got one point," he said.
Earlier, England took the lead after Paige Gillott scored in the 40th minute. But Navneet converted a stroke in the 53rd to help India equalise. England regained the lead soon after after Tessa Howard made most of a PC.
Debutant Rutuja Pisal Dadaso drew parity in the 57th minute following a lovely through ball from Sunelita down the middle to take the game into shootouts.
In the men's, meanwhile, it was all square till half-time as a new-look India struggled to create chances early on. Besides Harmanpreet, there were five more changes to the team and they took their time to take control of the game.
It finally happened two minutes into the third quarter when Mandeep scored following some quick passing between Manpreet Singh, Sukhjeet Singh and Dilpreet.
