India marked their entry into the semi-finals of the FIH Hockey Men’s Junior World Cup 2023 with a close 4-3 win over the Netherlands in a thrilling quarter-finals match which took place in the National Hockey Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Thursday.
Araijeet Singh Hundal (35’), Sourabh Anand Kushwaha (52’), Aditya Arjun Lalage (34’) and captain Uttam Singh (57’) scored the goals for the Indian men’s hockey team while Timo Boers (5’), Olivier Hortensius (44’) and Pepijn van der Heijden (16’) were the Dutch players who scored for their team.
The Netherlands which is seeded as world No. 4, dominated throughout the early first quarter with a penalty corner conversion from Timo Boers. Although, the Indian side played a solid defence but Pepijn van der Heijden was successful in scoring for Netherlands in the second quarter through conversion of second penalty corner and thereby taking their lead to 2-0 at half-time.
World No. 3 India and the two-time former FIH Hockey Junior World Cup champions, returned with a stronger comeback in the third quarter with a goal produced by Aditya Lalage which was also assisted by Araijeet Singh Hundal. It was just two minutes later after the first goal has happened that Araijeet scored the equaliser for India with a penalty stroke.
With less than 10 minutes remaining into the game, Indians raised the tempo following which a brilliant attack was provided by Sourabh Anand Kushwaha who found the back of the net off a rebound to get the score level at 3-3. The fourth goal was yet another opportunity for the conversion of another penalty corner which was in favour of India this time with captain Uttam Singh scoring the fourth goal to put India ahead with just three minutes left into the game.
