Daily Times

LAHORE: India edged out spirited Pakistan 4-3, a seven-goal thriller, on Wednesday to clinch bronze medal in the 3rd-place playoff of the Asian Champions Trophy 2021 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Harmanpreet Singh, Sumit, Varun Kumar and Akashdeep Singh scored the goals for India while Mohammad Arfraz, Abdul Rana and Mohammad Nadeem were the scorers for Pakistan. India made a brilliant attacking start, earning four back-to-back penalty corners within a minute into the game and drag-flicker Harmanpreet finally managed to convert on the final attempt to put the defending champions ahead in the first quarter. But Pakistan hit back quickly as Arfraz capitalised on a defensive lapse from India in the 11th minute to cancel out Harmanpreet’s 8th goal of the tournament. And they took a shock lead in the third quarter when Abdul converted a simple tap in to help his team leap ahead in the 33rd minute.

But 12 minutes later India equalised through Sumit, who took advantage of the chaos in front of the Pakistan goal to tap the ball into the net. Varun then converted a penalty corner in the 53rd minute to give the lead back to India after which Akashdeep doubled it in the 57th minute. But Pakistan hit back immediately with Nadeem scoring their third but they ran out of time to add any more to their tally and suffered their second successive defeat against India. India captain Manpreet Singh was adjudged Player of the Match for his brilliant performance in the midfield, even though he couldn’t score for his team.

This was the second time India faced Pakistan in this tournament edition after the round-robin stage which the defending champions won 3-1. India in fact, finished the group stage at the top of the table with 3 wins in 4 matches. But they came up short against Japan in the semifinals and went down 3-5. Pakistan, who were joint-winners along with India 2018, lost their semifinal 5-6 against South Korea. The campaign in Dhaka has come as an eye-opener for India, who now have an idea about their bench strength. Graham Reid’s side will look to work on their shortcoming ahead of an important year wherein they will gun for the Asian Games gold medal.