Skip to main content

India notch first win in FIFA World Cup qualifiers

BENGALURU: Robin Singh helped India break their losing streak in the FIFA World Cup qualifiers. Playing at his favourite stomping ground, the Bengaluru FC forward scored the winner against Guam to earn India their first win in six matches on Thursday.

Under heavy rain at the Sree Kanteerava stadium, Robin turned his marker at the edge of the box and fired a thunderous shot with his right to give India the lead in the 11th minute. India held on despite being down to 10-men for the whole of second half after medio Sehnaj Singh was ejected in the 42nd minute for a dangerous tackle.

The win helped India stay alive, at least till their next game away to Iran in March next year, in their quest to qualify for the 2019 Asian Cup, while the defeat almost crushed Guam's hopes for a top-2 finish ahead of Oman to advance to the third round.

"I'm happy that we won but we beat Guam and not Iran so don't get very excited. We need more international experience. If you ask any U-19 player how many games he will say 40-50 games but if you ask the same question to an English U-19 he will say 250 matches. That's the difference. You need to give them more exposure to help them graduate to the Indian team," India coach Stephen Constantine.

Despite playing with an extra man for the whole of the second half, Guam failed to make it count as India held on showing great hunger to score their first victory. Though most of the action was in India's half Guam never looked like scoring as the Indian keeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu and the defence marshalled by Sandesh Jhingan played their hearts out.

Their best chance came in the 79th minute but Marcus Lopez blasted wide with only 'keeper Gurpreet to beat after being set being set up by Ryan Guy. Guam went close at least twice more but Gurpreet was in no mood to drop three points. With the defence and Gurpreet in full alert, India relied on fast counters to double their lead. In the 71st minute, Chhetri almost made it 2-0.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having ...

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...