Bangladesh girls finish 3rd in maiden campaign, boys end up 4th

Bangladesh girls' team finished third while the boys' team finished fourth in the AHF U-18 Asia Cup hockey tournament in Dazhou, China, on Sunday.

The girls' team, who were participating in this tournament for the first time, finished their campaign with a 6-2 win over Kazakhstan in the third/fourth place decider today. 

Although Kazakhstan had opened the scoring and scored the last goal too, Bangladesh scored six goals in between to clinch the third spot in the eight-team competition. Airin Akter Riya was adjudged the best player for scoring a hattrick.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh boys' team finished fourth following a 5-2 defeat against Malaysia. Like the previous matches that they lost against Pakistan and Japan, Bangladesh were in the game and kept Malaysia on par till the third quarter of the match with goals from Jony Islam and Mohammad Mehedi.

However, the boys in red and green, who were runners-up in the last edition held nine years ago, conceded three goals in the final quarter to lose the contest by a big margin.

The Bangladesh teams did not get to play any practice matches ahead of the competition, except for 30-minute outings against Kazakhstan, both in boys' and girls' groups, a day before the start of the tournament.