Watch: Ugly brawl breaks out between India, Nepal players minutes after Sunil Chhetri’s goal

India beat two neighbours in their first two matches of the 2023 SAFF Championships to book a place in the semi-finals, with the second of those victories coming on Saturday against Nepal. Incidentally, as was the case in their first match against Pakistan, there were some heated scenes in the game against Nepal as well.

The incident happened in the second half of the match. While a misfiring Indian team could not score a goal in the first hour, that changed when captain Sunil Chhetri tapped one in off a squared pass from Akash Mishra. Chhetri, who had broken the record for the highest Asian goalscorer in international football by scoring a hat-trick in the match against Pakistan, thus took his tally to 91 goals for India in the 61st minute. Just three minutes later, a fight broke out between India’s Rahul Bheke and Nepal’s Bimal Magar.

The duo had competed form an aerial ball, at the end of which Bheke was left on the ground. A number of players rushed to the pair in seconds and in the ensuing melee, Magar and India’s Nikhil Poojary even fell down momentarily. It all dissipated quite quickly as well with the referee intervening to calm things down. India got into the groove after that and less than 10 minutes after the first goal was scored, the lead was doubled after a rather bizarre maiden India goal for Mahesh. As Sahal sent Chhetri clean through, the skipper took his time before releasing his left-footed shot. The effort was deflected by goalkeeper Kiran Kumar Limbu, and bounced twice on the crossbar before Mahesh bundled it in from point-blank range.

Kuwait beat Pakistan 4-0 earlier in the day and will join India in the semi-final from Group A. Nepal, finalists of the previous edition, are eliminated. There were as many as eight changes to the India side that cruised past Pakistan 4-0 in the opener. Only hat-trick heroes Sunil Chhetri, Anirudh Thapa and Sahal Abdul Samad were retained in the eleven. In the entirely-new backline, Rahul Bheke was handed his first start of the month.