Hockey
Tokyo Olympics: Who will the Indian Women's Hockey team face in the semi-finals?
Bringing a surreal dream to reality, the Indian women's hockey team thrashed Australia to book themselves a semi-final spot against Argentina!
The Indian women's hockey team ushered in a watershed moment in the history of Indian hockey as they scripted the biggest victory by overcoming a stiff challenge from World No. 2 Australia to make it to their very first semi-finals at the Olympics. The Tokyo Olympics is starting to look a lot like a fairytale as the Indian women managed to survive four defeats to reach the quarter-finals and miraculously notched a spectacularly surreal win over Australia, 1-0, and sailed into the semi-finals of the event.
With a lot of history at stake with every step they take now - the Indian women are dangerously close to medalling for the first time at the Olympics but first to ensure that a medal is a sure-shot affair, the World No. 9 side from India need to brave past the World No. 5 women's hockey team from Argentina. The Argentine team has won 3 games and lost 2 so far and isn't looking as invincible as the Australian side did - which will give much hope to the Rani Rampal led side who are on a dream run, scripting their own fairytale.
Meet the Las Leonas - the Women's Hockey team of Argentina
Although the World No. 5 Argentina team have never secured the gold at the Olympics, they do have silver medals to boast of from the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics, as they came to be known as the Las Leonas or 'the lionesses', after their ceremonious win at the 2000 Sydney Games.
Making it to their first semi-final since the 2012 London Games, the Argentine side stormed into the last four stages of the Tokyo Olympics after defeating Germany, the World No. 3's very comprehensively. Not allowing the German side to score a single goal, the Argentine women displayed sheer power to race to a 3-0 victory and has now set up a date with first-time semi-finalists, the World No. 9 team from India.
It will be an uphill task for India no doubt as the Argentine women will be coming into the match with prior experience of playing at this stage and having ousted the 2016 Rio Olympics bronze medallist side of Germany.
However, if we are to gather and learn anything from today, it is that we shouldn't be underestimating the Indian side because these women - led by the likes of Rani Rampal, Savita Punia, Gurjit Kaur and Vandana Katariya are turning out to be real showstoppers which promises that the semi-final encounter will be high on drama and historic as our women step out to play and continue this fairytale.