Santiago, Mar 2: India opened their campaign in the World Hockey Olympic qualifying tournament with a rousing 8-0 win against Russia at the Prince of Wales Country Club here Sunday.

Prabhjot Singh, who has been in tremendous form in the past one year, did the star turn for the Indians scoring three goals (19th, 29th, 65th) while Dilip Tirkey (14th), Tushar Khandekar (36th), Sardara Singh (48th) and V Ramachandra Raghunath (54th) netted the others.

Scoring four goals in each half, the Indians left nothing to chance and were on the attack against the 50th ranked team that appeared clueless.

The Russians left huge gaps in their defence and the Indian forwards needed no second invitation and came away with a flattering scoreline.

Using the quick short passes to good effect, India moved fluently and ripped apart the Russian defence that increasingly grew tentative before yielding ground at the first hint of trouble.

Only late in the game when the Indians erred in relaxing their grip on the game did the Russians squeezed in a couple of moves the last of which led to two back-to-back penalty corners on the stroke of full-time.

India, backed by a sizeable group of expatriate countrymen besides Ambassador to Chile Mrs Susmita Gongulee Thomas, did not have to wait long for their first goal. After Raghunath failed with an early penalty corner, Dilip Tirkey was on the mark with a well-angled direct hit to the boards.

'Our performance was quite satisfactory'

Santiago, Mar 2: It was huge relief to get the first match out of the way, and the 8-0 margin with which we beat Russia in the Olympic qualifying tournament in Santiago on Saturday was a big boost to our confidence as we prepare to take on Austria, Indian coach, Joaquim Carvalho said on Sunday.

More than the satisfaction I derived from the big win, it is more important that we started off strongly. In the past, Indian teams always tended to stumble in the opening game, and, in that context, to come away with three points in the kitty was extremely satisfying.

I must confess that I was a bit anxious prior to the game, for we had not seen much of Russia in recent times. Of course, we used to play the Russians during the 1980s and they were then a tough team with close marking and physical play.

From this perspective, I can say that we went in blind in the sense that we had very little data on our opponents, but once we got into our stride, we were up and running.