Hockey: Double delight!

Malaysia's Chitra Devi (front) attempts a shot past Thailand keeper Suwanmanee Rachan during their match at the Queen Sirikit Hockey Stadium Sport Centre yesterday. Malaysia won 6-0.

MALAYSIA cruised to a hockey double when both the men's and women's teams registered comfortable wins in their respective finals at the Queen Sirikit Sports Centre in Pathum Thani yesterday.

The men's hockey team thrashed Singapore 7-0 to win the gold yesterday.

The men thrashed Singapore 7-0 to retain the gold medal they won in Kuala Lumpur in 2001 when hockey was last held at the Sea Games.

G. Sasitheran notched a hat-trick with field goals in the 24th, 50th and 52nd minutes while S. Kuhan weighed in with a brace off penalty corners in the eighth and 59th minutes.

Baljit Singh (12th) and Hafifi Hafiz Hanafi (23rd) also scored for Malaysia, who had the gold medal in the bag by halftime after racing to a 4-0 lead.

But men's coach Sarjit Singh was far from happy with the way his side played despite the hefty win.
"This was not our best performance and not what I wanted to see. We spurned so many chances to score and should have won by a bigger margin," he said.

The women, who only edged Thailand 1-0 in group play, ran riot in the final against the hosts as they completed their three matches without conceding a goal while scoring 12.

Skipper Norfaraha Hashim opened accounts off a penalty corner in the 20th minute before Fazilla Sylvester Silin added the second in the 33rd.

A. Chitra Devi as good as confirmed the gold with the third in the 47th minute. Fazilla added the fourth in the 56th before Norfaraha completed her hat-trick with two more penalty corner conversions in the 68th and 70th minutes.

Women's team manager A. Malarvani said the team wanted to impress after struggling to get past Thailand in the preliminary round.

"What happened before did not matter as we wanted to get it right by winning in style," she said.

NST