Indian emerge champions, beat Poland 6-4 in final

Lausanne: A magnificent India made a stunning comeback from being three-goal down to beat Poland 6-4 in a pulsating final to clinch the inaugural FIH Hockey 5s championship here on Sunday.
India, who had topped the five-team league standings with three wins and one draw en route final, ended their campaign with an unbeaten record.
This was India’s second win of day over the same opponents. India had beaten Poland, who had finished second with two wins and as many losses, 6-2 in their round-robin league match three and half hours earlier in the day.

Playing their third match of the day, the Indians were stunned for a while after Poland pumped in 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 one match on Sunday before the final as against India’s two and perhaps that might have some effect on Graham Reid’s men in the fast-paced format played in just 20 minutes in a match.
But the Indians regrouped quickly from the initial jolt with Sanjay and captain Gurinder Singh finding the target in the eighth and ninth minutes respectively to go to the breather trailing 2-3.

It was just a matter of time that the Indians got their mojo back as they surged to 4-3 lead after fine field goals from Dhami Boby Singh (11th) and tournament’s most prolific scorer Raheel Mohammed (13th).
Once they were on the ascendancy, there was no stopping the Indians against a hapless Poland as Raheel (17th) and Singh (19th) struck their respective second goal of the match to complete the formalities.

Polish captain Jacek Kurowski pulled one back in the 18th minute to reduce the goal margin. Raheel ended the tournament with 10 goals from five matches at the top of the goal-scorer’s chart.