Dead-eyed Jeremy Hayward has fired the Kookaburras to a third straight victory over India in five days at the Perth International Festival of Hockey as they continued their smooth path towards the Olympics.
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One penalty stroke and an unstoppable drag flick penalty corner from the 31-year-old set-piece maestro Hayward in the come-from-behind 2-1 win was enough to seal the Australian men's overall triumph in the five-match Test program.
After defeating the talented Indian side 5-1 and 4-2 in successive days over the weekend, Wednesday's win was harder earned as the Australians found themselves 1-0 down late in the third quarter to Jugraj Singh's 41st minute drag-flick.
But Australia, who had struggled to break down a more stubborn defence after their nine goals in the previous two matches, hit back strongly when awarded a penalty stroke just three minutes later that Hayward put away expertly.
With India's discipline letting them down, the penalty-corner began to pile up and despite the brilliant goalkeeping of PR Sreejesh, who was named the player of the match, there was an inevitability as Hayward finally crashed in his 116th international goal in 222 matches from a 49th minute short corner.
The Indians must be sick of the sight of the Darwin defender, who has now scored 16 times against them in 34 matches.
"We're treating this as five individual matches and we just need to get better as a team," Hayward said post-match as the Kookaburras took their 2024 record to nine wins from 11 matches.
"We're still trying to find the best combination for Paris so it's gonna be tough. There are 27 deserving blokes right there, and we'll see how it goes. We're still building."
The Indian team is improving each match and Hayward reckons it will be no easy task to nail down a clean sweep of wins, with the next Test set for Friday when Perth local Tom Wickham is set to play his 100th international for Australia.
"I don't take any games for granted. Whether it's another Test match, or it's a game in a final against the biggest teams in the world ... it's really important and they all mean the world to me."
Australian Associated Press
