Asian Games 2018: Men's Hockey Bronze-Medal match, India vs Pakistan preview, telecast, date, start time and where to watch online
Defending champions India suffered a shock defeat to Malaysia in the first semifinal of the Asian Games Men's Hockey tournament. One massive upset followed another, as Pakistan, the most successful team in the history of the competition went down to Japan in the second semifinal.
As such, the bronze-medal match at Jakarta will be a repeat of the Incheon final of 2014 and promises to be just as intense and dramatic as a summit clash.
India and Pakistan have played each other 173 times in the past, and the Indians have won 60 of those encounters while Pakistan has won 82. In the Asian Games, the two sides have met 14 times (which includes 9 finals), and the Pakistanis have won 8 while the Indians have won 3.
Pakistan has an ominous record in the finals, however, having lost only 2 of the 9 gold-medal matches which they have played against the Indians thus far. The Indians beat Pakistan in the final of the Bangkok edition in 1966 and had to wait until 2014 to repeat the feat.
Of late, the Indians have had a dominant run against their neighbours and will be keen to maintain their ascendancy when the two sides clash in the bronze-medal match for the first time ever.
The Indians beat Pakistan by a 3-2 margin in a round-robin encounter of the Asian Champions Trophy in Pahang in 2016 and have never looked back since. The Indians, who were then coached by Roelant Oltmans, beat Pakistan by an identical margin in the finals of the same competition.
At the Hockey World League Semifinal in London last year, the Indians mauled Pakistan twice in the space of a week winning first by a huge 7-1 margin followed by a 6-1 margin but fared badly in the tournament losing to Malaysia and Canada.
As a result of the disappointing show, Indian coach Roelant Oltmans was shown the door but the Indians continued their dominant run over Pakistan under the tutelage of Sjoerd Marijne, beating their arch-rivals twice in the Asia Cup at Dhaka last October.
Oltmans decided to switch to the Pakistan camp, earlier this year, in March, before his side took on the Indians at the Commonwealth Games. At Gold Coast, Mubashar Ali stunned Sjoerd Marijne's team by scoring off a PC at the death, and Pakistan who are ranked 13th in the world, split points with the Indians who were then ranked sixth.
The two sides met again in the opener of the Champions Trophy at Breda, and this time, a ruthless Indian side punished Oltmans' boys who went down by a 0-4 margin, and the Indians have since risen to be the fifth-best team in the world.
Following the bitter disappointment of not making it to the Asian Games final, the two old rivals will no doubt aim to ease the pain and assuage their fans back home by going all out to defeat the other, in what promises to be a magnificent contest.
The teams are as follows:
Pakistan: M.Rizwan Sr (Captain), Imran Butt, Amjad Ali, M.Irfan Sr, Mubashir Ali, Faisal Qadir, Ammad Shakeel Butt, Touseeq Arshad, Rashid Mahmood, Tasawar Abbas, Abu Bakar, Ateeq Arshad Dilber, Umar Bhutta, Shafqat Rasool, Ali Shan, Junaid Manzoor, and Aijaz Ahmed.
India: PR Sreejesh (Captain), Krishan B Pathak, Harmanpreet Singh, Varun Kumar, Birendra Lakra, Surender Kumar, Rupinder Pal Singh, Amit Rohidas, Manpreet Singh, Chinglensana Singh Kangujam (Vice-Captain), Simranjeet Singh, Sardar Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, SV Sunil, Mandeep Singh, Akashdeep Singh, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, Dilpreet Singh
Here is how you can catch all the action:
Event: Asian Games 2018
Venue: Jakarta, Indonesia
Date: 1 September 2018
Time: 4:00 pm Indian Standard Time (IST)
Telecast: Sony ESPN, Sony Ten 2, Ten 2 HD, Sony ESPN HD
Live Streaming: Sony Liv
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