10-man India lose 0-1 to Qatar

Doha, Jun 04 (PTI):
A 10-man India lost 0-1 to Asian champions Qatar with goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu’s outstanding performance coming in the way of a heavier loss for the tourists in their World Cup qualifying round match here.
Abdel Aziz scored in the 33rd minute in a match completely dominated by the Qataris on Thursday night.
The two sides had played out a goal-less draw in their first leg match here in September 2019, mainly due to Sandhu’s impressive show under the bar that time as well.
India played with 10 men from the 18th minute onwards as Rahul Bheke received his marching orders after picking up a second yellow card for handling the ball outside the box. He had earlier received a yellow card in the ninth minute.
India are already out of contention for a World Cup berth but they are still in the reckoning for the 2023 Asian Cup.
Igor Stimac’s men still have two matches in the joint qualifiers to salvage some pride and notch up at least a win. They play Bangladesh on June 7 and Afghanistan on June 15.
Group toppers Qatar, who are yet to lose a match, came up with waves of attacks and more than half their squad stayed put in the Indian half for most of the time. They had 66 per cent possession as against 34 per cent of India.
But for Sandhu’s heroics, India would have lost the match by a big margin. He pulled off as many as nine saves in the Group E match played at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium Thursday night.
In fact, Qatar had 29 shots on opposition goal as against India’s none. India did have two good moves from counter-attacks but Manvir Singh failed to make them count.
India captain Sunil Chhetri, who returned to the team after recovering from COVID-19, was replaced by Udanta Singh at the resumption of second half.

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