GIFU, JAPAN — The record came quietly, as records often do in sport. Savita Punia took her position between the posts at Gifu Prefectural Green Stadium on Monday afternoon, as she has done more than 320 times before for India, and became the most-capped women’s hockey player her country has ever produced. The 36-year-old goalkeeper, known across the circuit as “The Wall of India,” made her 321st senior international appearance as India’s women dismantled Indonesia 17-1, consolidating their grip on Pool B at the Asian Games 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya — and nobody watching was especially surprised by either development.
The scoreline told its own story. India have now struck 36 goals in two matches in Japan, conceded once, and spent roughly the better part of four hours in this tournament making one thing unambiguously clear: they came here to end a 44-year wait for Asian Games gold.
Three hat-tricks arrived in the space of 90 minutes. Deepika Sehrawat, who scored eight goals in India’s 19-0 opening demolition of Uzbekistan on Saturday, added three more on Monday — at the 8th, 28th, and 40th minutes — to take her tournament total to 11 in two appearances. The number deserves a moment of attention: 11 goals in 180 minutes of pool-stage hockey, across two different opponents, with three of them coming in a match her side was already winning by six when she scored the third. That is a different category of finishing.
But Deepika was not alone. Navneet Kaur completed a hat-trick through goals at the 35th, 56th, and 57th minutes, the final two in a burst that confirmed Indonesia had no answer to the depth of India’s forward line. Rutuja Pisal matched her with strikes at the 15th, 20th, and 38th minutes — a performance that underlined the point: India’s attack is not carried by a single player but constructed from a squad where the third-most prolific forward in a 17-1 win still scores a hat-trick.
Seven of India’s goals came from penalty corners, 10 from open play — a distribution that suggests a team with solutions to more than one problem. Sunelita Toppo contributed twice, Lalremsiami Hmarzote scored twice, Sakshi Rana added two more. Captain Salima Tete and Ishika Chaudhary completed the list of scorers.
The Uzbekistan result on Saturday, a 19-0 outcome that served as the tournament’s opening statement, had positioned India as favourites for the pool. Monday’s continuation of that form removed whatever residual doubt existed about whether the Uzbekistan scoreline was an aberration or a reflection of the team’s actual level. Six consecutive Olympic gold medals between 1928 and 1956 gave India a claim to world dominance in field hockey that no other nation has matched — a sport whose passionate community hold extends from South Asia to the ice rinks of North America, where communities invest in the game with a similar devotion.
For Savita Punia, the record has been building toward this for years. The Haryana-born goalkeeper made her senior debut in 2009 and has since anchored India through three Olympics, two Asian Games campaigns, and seasons of FIH Pro League fixtures that constitute the daily work of international hockey. She equalled Vandana Katariya’s all-time mark of 320 appearances in Saturday’s opener and moved past it on Monday, becoming the outright leader of a list that reflects the depth of her commitment to a sport she has played at the highest level for nearly two decades. At 36, she is still playing.
India’s women last won Asian Games gold in 1982, in New Delhi, when the tournament existed in a form that bears little resemblance to the current edition. That is 44 years of silver and bronze — two silvers, three bronzes, the most recent a bronze at Hangzhou in 2023. The 2026 edition, hosted across the Aichi-Nagoya region, presents what is broadly regarded as the strongest Indian women’s hockey squad since the early 2000s.
Pool B — which also includes Japan, Thailand, and Singapore alongside Indonesia and Uzbekistan — runs until September 27. The semi-finals are scheduled for September 30. India have not yet played a side capable of posing the kind of defensive challenge that Japan, or a resurgent South Korean lineup from Pool A, might pose in the knockout rounds.
What the 17-1 result does not answer is whether India can maintain this standard against opposition operating at an entirely different level. In a pool stage that has offered little resistance, the scorelines are at best signals and at worst irrelevant to what happens after September 27. Whether Savita Punia, Deepika Sehrawat, and the three hat-trick heroes of Monday can translate pool dominance into knockout resilience is the question that actually matters — and it remains, as of Monday evening in Gifu, unanswered.
