India take Bronze at Women’s ERGO Hockey Junior World Cup

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Mönchengladbach, Germany, August 04, 2013: India won their first-ever medal in women’s Junior World Cup history. The Indian girls take home the Bronze medal with a 3-2 shoot-out victory over England at the ERGO Hockey Junior World Cup in Mönchengladbach. The winning goal was scored by 17-year-old Navneet Kaur. Korea was the stronger team in the match for 11th place against China and took an easy 4-0 win.
Bronze medal match: India v England 1-1 (1-0), 3-2 PSO
The Bronze medal match started off with an early penalty corner to England but Grace Balsdon’s shot was deflected before reaching India’s goalkeeper Chanu Sanarik Ningombam. The English girls kept pushing for the opening goal but it were India who would get on the scoreboard first. A counter-attack saw Rani powerfully strike home after 13 minutes of play. A few minutes later, India failed to double their lead from a penalty corner variation. The Indian girls slowly took control of the match, but were unable to break the English defence. The halftime score stood at 1-0.
England entered the second half with a different attitude. They stepped up the pace and pressed for the equaliser and eventually got it through Anna Toman by shooting on target in a crowded circle. Both teams kept going and went for the winning goal but ran out of time. As the result remained tied 1-1 after 70 minutes of play, the Bronze medal match was decided in a penalty shoot-out competition.
India substituted their goalkeepers replacing Ningombam by Bigan Soy who has not played a single minute in this tournament so far. Only 5 of 14 attempts were successful in the shoot-out competition with Rani scoring twice and Navneet Kaur scoring for India and Emily Defroand converting twice for England.