India were crowned the Asia Cup Rajgir, Bihar 2025 winners after they convincingly beat Korea 4-1 at the Rajgir Sports Complex on Sunday with the stadium packed to the brim as locals turned up in large numbers to cheer the home team. With this win, India have ended the eight-year wait to regain title. With this win, India have qualified for the FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup 2026 in the Netherlands and Belgium. Goals were scored by Dilpreet Singh (28′,45′), Sukhjeet Singh (1′) and Amit Rohidas (50′).
The last time they won the Asia Cup was in 2017, Dhaka. They have now won the Asia Cup title four times overall, behind only South Korea’s total of five. Pakistan are the only other team to win the tournament, as they clinched the first three gold medals, beating India in 1982, 1985 and 1989.
India have reached the Asia Cup finals most number times; this was their 9th appearance in the title clash in all as they finished 2nd in the first three editions and then in 1994 and 2013. Korea have been in the finals 7 times while Pakistan have 6 to their name. Pakistan, it is worth noting, did not travel to India this time. Earlier in the day, Malaysia finished third to clinch bronze for the second time, to go with 2017. Malaysia were left heartbroken by Korea on Saturday as they were minutes away from sealing their first visit to the final but crumbled from 3-1 ahead to lose 3-4. But on Sunday they prevailed against China, who were one of the surprise packages of the tournament early on but faltered in the last two matches to finish a creditable fourth.
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“You learn from every match. As I said, the plus and minus are always there. But how soon you analyse it, work on it, apply things, that matters. So, I think as a team defence, we have done very well. And the scoring we are seeing is very good. I think defence. If we see, the last matches we played, we gave tough competition to the opponents,” Harmanpreet Singh told ANI after the match.
Harmanpreet hailed the forwards, saying, “They did a great job. They were converting all the opportunities in the goal. So, this combination is good. We will continue it.”
Following the hosts’ win, Hockey India announced INR 3 lakh each to players and INR 1.5 lakh to the support staff.
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Number of men’s Asia Cup titles:
South Korea: 5
India 4:
Pakistan: 3
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Past Asia Cup winners and runners-up:
1982: Pakistan beat India
1985: Pakistan beat India
1989: Pakistan beat India
1994: Korea beat India
1999: South Korea beat Pakistan
2003: India beat Pakistan
2007: India beat South Korea
2009: South Korea beat Pakistan
2013: South Korea beat India
2017: India beat Malaysia
2022: South Korea beat Malaysia
2025: India beat South Korea
