Despite their impressive showing in the round-robin stage, in which they lost only to the ulitmate winners, the Indians had been written off.

But, skipper Pritam Rani Thakran and her squad had other ideas. They demonstrated that by matching the Koreans move for move and drew first blood through the Indian captain.

The Koreans drew level on the stroke of half-time through Kim Tae-Seon and scored the winning goal through Oh Seung-Shin midway through the second session to bag the gold, pushing the Indians to silver.

India had won the gold in the 1982 New Delhi Asian Games where women's hockey made its debut and took the bronze in the 1986 Seoul Asiad.

They did not go to Beijing in 1990 and ended up fourth at Hiroshima four years ago. The Koreans were certainly expected todictate terms and they started off by forcing the first penalty corner in the fifth minute. The Indians began forcing their way up and in the 11th minute Manjinder Kaur's shot sneaked in through Nidhi Khullar. But umpire Yaueda Kazuko of Japan ruled that it had gone off the player's thigh.

The Indian efforts ultimately bore fruit in the 27th minute. Sita Gussain fed Jyoti Kullu a long pass from Kamla Dalal. Jyoti relayed it to Pritam Thakran who shot the ball home to put India in the lead.

This was the wake up call for the koreans who swung into action. The pressures they excerted yielded results just before the break. Kim Tae Seon converted her team's fifth penalty corner (1-1).

In the 50th minute, off Korea's last penalty corner, Oh Seung-Shin sent the ball in like a bullet (2-1).

The Indians had not given up yet. They swung back into attack and forced three penalty corners but nothing came off it. Earlier, China bagged the bronze defeating Japan 2-0. Both goals came in the first half, scored by FuBaorong converting a penatly corner and a field goal by Yang Huiping.