Men’s Olympic Qualifier -- Sandeep’s hi-five books India’s ticket to London

Drag flicker Sandeep Singh singlehandedly powered India into the London Olympics with a hi-five performance at the jam packed and floodlit Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium on Sunday night. His fiver from unstoppable drag flicks helped the hosts rout France 8-1 in the final of the Olympic qualifiers and put an end to the nightmare following their failure to qualify at Santiago four years ago. India led 3-1 at half time.

Almost everybody rose to the occasion on this emotional night to help redeem the honour of the eight-time Olympic champions and forget the pain of the failure of the women’s team to make the grade the night before.

Midfielder Birendra Lakra (16^th minute), Sandeep Singh (19^th , 24^th, 37^th, 50^th and 51^st) , S V Sunil (43^rd) and V R Raghunath (55^th) got the goals for the top seeds and favourites, while France reduced the margin through Simon Martin-Brisac in the 24^th minute in a hot-headed game where the visitors came the worse off from the numerous cautions that were dished out.

In fact, at one time in the second half, France had nine men on the field as India pressed home the advantage. India had beaten France 6-2 in the round robin match earlier.

With 15 goals from six matches and three hat-tricks, including five in this match, Sandeep Singh clearly deserved the man of the match and tournament award.

Till the floodgates were opened in the second half, the tie was not as one-sided as the scoreline suggested and France, who forced six penalty corners, were very much in the picture. In fact, India have to be grateful to their own goalkeeper P R Sreejesh for keeping France’s tally to the minimum. The Keralite rose to the occasion with numerous saves that helped keep the momentum with the hosts. At the other end, Matthias Dierckens also pulled off a few of his own or India’s goal count could have easily gone into double figures.

Two goals in three minutes in the first half put ‘les bleus’ on the back foot. Michael Nobbs’ boys took the lead in the 16^th minute after a move involving skipper Sardar and Manpreet whose hit into the circle was trapped and reverse slotted by a diving Birendra Lakra.

The very next minute Shivendra Singh missed a sitter when he failed to deflect the ball at the goalmouth. But Sandeep Singh converted India’s second penalty corner which was awarded by the third umpire after Shivendra claimed that his pant was tugged by a French defender (2-0).

But two minutes later Simon Martin-Brisac beat Sreejesh with a superb deflection off a lightning counter from the left to put the pressure back on the light blues playing in white. However, Sandeep again came to the rescue with his second consecutive strike off the third penalty corner award to help India cross over with a 3-1 lead.

All in all, it was the FIH that set us up with thick ticket to London by bestowing on us the ‘home advantage’, an easy pool where we were the top seeds and a favourable draw that enabled us to fine tune our way into the title round. Add to that the favourable umpiring decisions that helped us along the way in comparison to the hostile officiating that Indians had to endure over the last couple of decades.

In other classification matches, Canada edged past Poland by the odd goal in seven to clinch the bronze while Italy routed rookies Singapore 5-0 to take the fifth spot.