Asian Games 2018: India vs Indonesia preview, telecast, date, start time and where to watch online

The Golden Girls will look to start afresh after the World Cup

Close on the heels of an encouraging show at the World Cup, the Indian women's team will begin their Asian Games campaign at the Bung Karno Sports Arena on Sunday. The frustration of not making it to the semifinal stage at London was quite evident and the girls will more than likely look to run riot against some of the lesser fancied teams at Jakarta.

India is now the highest-ranked team in the competition post the ranking revisions done by the FIH and will look to justify the same by topping their pool ahead of the Koreans who have slipped behind. Performances at London have tilted the scales a wee bit, and the Indian eves currently occupy the ninth place in the world rankings followed closely by Korea and China who are ranked tenth and eleventh respectively.

Rani Rampal and co. will also be eager to improve upon their bronze-medal winning performance at the last edition of the competition at Incheon and hopefully go all the way this time around.

A highly experienced bunch of eleven players from the Incheon Games will be in action, and coach Sjoerd Marijne and the girls are emphatic that the ultimate aim is a gold medal which would ensure them a ticket to Tokyo 2020.

At the Asian Games in 2014, the Indians failed to get past South Korea in the semifinals, and had also lost to China in the pool stages, but have made giant strides since then. At the Asian Champions Trophy in Singapore in 2016, the Golden Girls stormed past South Korea and Malaysia in the group stages and beat China in the final to record a historic win.

A year later, the Indians reaffirmed their continental supremacy by thrashing China in the pool stages and beating them again in the finals via a shootout to win the Asia Cup.

The Indians will be hoping to start with a bang against Indonesia

At the Asian Champions Trophy earlier this year, the Indians veered past Japan, Malaysia, and China with ridiculous ease but seemed to hit a roadblock against hosts South Korea. A drawn pool match and a loss in the final dented India's pride especially since they had beaten the Koreans in a preparatory series before the Commonwealth Games.

The Indian coaching staff and the girls are adamant, however, that Korea can be beaten and attributed their loss to a bad performance on the day. For now, though, Sjoerd Marijne's chargers have Indonesia in their sights, and barring any major surprises should be able to pick up full points without breaking a sweat.

The Indonesian girls have never played the Asian Games before and their match against the Indians will be their first ever in the history of the competition. As a matter of fact, the hosts have not been part of the Asia Cup or the Asian Champions Trophy either and will start off as a largely unknown entity.

The pitch at London did pose a few problems for the Indian girls but coach Sjoerd Marijne reckons that there will no such issues at Jakarta.