Daily Times

LAHORE: Pakistan, after drawing four straight matches at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in Australia, finally won one against Canada to secure the seventh place at the men’s hockey tournament on Friday. The Men in Green, in their pool matches, played stalemates against Wales (1-1), India (2-2), England (2-2) and Malaysia (1-1) to end on the fourth position in their Group B. This pitted them against Canada for seventh place playoff where they won 3-1. Pakistan’s 12 attempts on Canada’s goal reaped three goals, while Canada could only convert one chance out of their nine tries.

Canada opened the scoring with a goal in the 12th minute and kept their lead intact till half-time, but Pakistan came back strong after the break and equalised in the 34th minute courtesy Arslan Qadir’s field goal. Six minutes later, Pakistan won a penalty corner which was successfully converted into a goal in the 40th minute as the Men in Green registered a lead for the first time in the match. With three minutes remaining in the match, Pakistan scored one against all thanks to Muhammad Irfan Junior’s field goal to end their Games’ campaign on a high and end the match 3-1. Pakistan captain Muhammad Rizwan Sr said that their performance was not up to the mark in the tournament.

“We didn’t play well in the tournament and it took us a lot of time to get the momentum right. We should have won some of the matches instead of drawing them,” said Rizwan. “The coach is also not happy but we have learned a lot from the matches, but as I said that we were not able to score many goals. He added that this experience would be helpful to them in the upcoming assignments. “But as were are preparing for the big games next year, we have gained a lot of experience and learned a lot which will help us in preparing,” he concluded.

Published in Daily Times, April 14^th 2018.