Deepika's eight goals set an Asian Games record

A 22-year-old forward who started as a wrestler scored eight goals in sixty minutes on Saturday, the most any woman has scored in a single match at the Asian Games. Deepika Sehrawat’s haul powered India to a 19-0 demolition of Uzbekistan in their Pool B opener at Kakamigahara, and it was built almost entirely on one skill: the drag-flick from penalty corners.

The margin is lopsided enough to dismiss. Pool games against weaker opposition produce these scorelines at every Asian Games, and Uzbekistan were never going to trouble India. What makes the result worth recording is not the win but the mechanism — how Deepika scored, and what that says about the player India now has.

The eight goals

Minute	Type
8	Penalty corner
22	Penalty corner
25	Penalty corner
33	Field goal
36	Penalty corner
38	Penalty corner
41	Penalty corner
54	Field goal

Six of the eight came from penalty corners. That ratio is not unusual for a drag-flicker — it is the whole point of the role — but the volume is. Elite drag-flickers might take four or five corners in a match and convert two. Deepika took at least six and converted six, which is closer to a training drill than a competitive fixture.

The other eleven goals

India scored 19. Deepika scored 8. The remaining 11 came from eight different players, a distribution that suggests this was a team performance in which one player happened to be devastating.

Scorer	Goals
Deepika Sehrawat	8
Others (8 players)	11

Salima Tete, Sangita Kumari and Navneet Kaur were among the other scorers. The depth matters: India entered the tournament with a settled squad and multiple attacking options, and this match let all of them find the scoresheet.

Who Deepika Sehrawat is

Born on 6 December 2003 in Hisar, Haryana, Deepika is 22 years old and already a fixture in the senior squad. Her route into hockey is unusual: she trained as a wrestler alongside her brother before picking up a stick in 2012 and never looking back.

Age	22
Position	Forward / drag-flicker
State	Haryana
Club (Hockey India League)	Delhi SG Pipers

She was the top scorer at the Women’s Asian Champions Trophy and at the Junior Asia Cup 2024, back-to-back tournaments that announced her as the next drag-flick specialist in a country that has produced several. Signing for Delhi SG Pipers in the Hockey India League cemented her place in the professional circuit.

The drag-flick and what it produces

India’s modern competitiveness in hockey rests heavily on penalty-corner conversion. The drag-flick — a scooping motion that lifts the ball at speeds above 100 kph — is the shot that makes corners dangerous, and elite flickers are among the most valuable players in the sport.

Deepika belongs to that category now. Six conversions from six attempts in a single match is not sustainable against stronger defences, and it would be foolish to expect it in a semi-final. But the technique is there, the selection is there, and the scoring instinct is proven. The sample size is small; the signal is loud.

What this campaign is about

India’s women have not won Asian Games gold since 1982. They took bronze at Hangzhou 2023 and finished fifth at the Hockey World Cup last month, their best World Cup result in 52 years. The trajectory is upward, and this Asian Games is where the programme hopes to turn progress into a title.

Recent results
Asian Games 2023	Bronze
Hockey World Cup 2026	5th
Asian Games gold drought	Since 1982

The pool stage is not where titles are won or lost. India face Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and Singapore across the group phase, and none of those matches is likely to be as one-sided as the Uzbekistan game. The semi-finals on 30 September and the final on 2 October are the fixtures that matter.

What it does not prove

A 19-0 win over Uzbekistan does not prove India will beat Japan in the knockouts. It does not prove Deepika will convert at the same rate against a defence that charges properly. It does not prove the gold drought ends this year.

What it proves is narrower: that the team is sharp, that the first-choice drag-flicker is in devastating form, and that the squad depth is real. Those are the preconditions for a serious campaign, not the outcome of one.

The record is worth recording. The tournament is still to be won.