Hero CT: India shows late fire, Australia win 4-2

Australia scored through Trent Mitton (21st), Aran Zalewski (23rd), Flynn Ogilvie (33rd) and Tristan White (45th), while VR Raghunath (45th) and Mandeep Singh (47th) scored for India.

India needed to go all out in the first 10-15 minutes if they wanted to win and seal their berth into the final. Instead they opted to wait and paid the penalty as Australia overran them in the first three quarters and then simply sat on their lead to win.

As things now stand, India needs a draw between Britain and Belgium for that would put India ahead of both in points. If either Britain or Belgium win, India could be edged out of the finals. 

India has seven points with two wins and one draw and a goal difference of -1. Britain could walk into the final with a win, but a Belgium win would mean goal difference comes into play and in case it the same, Belgium moves ahead as they beat India in their individual clash.

Belgium would also need to score more goals, as they have fewer than India right now.Into the third quarter, both teams exchanged a goal each in the span of less than 20 seconds to make it 3-1 for the Australians and in the final quarter India had the lion’s share of exchanges, made greater chances, had a fair number of penalty corners, too, but just managed one more goal.

 That gave the scoreline a lot of respectability at 4-2, but it showed that Australians were way superior and yet the left the feeling that India could well have done better than what the final score showed.

Australia started on a fast note and very noticeably had greater possession and were almost all the time on the offensive. The net result was that whatever plan India may have had before the game, it went out of the window, as Australia dictated the terms.