Pakistan’s semifinal hopes went down to the wire as they were stunned by New Zealand 4-1 in their sec-ond match of the Commonwealth Games in Bir-mingham on Sunday.
The defeat means they lost two crucial points and will have to win the remaining two games to reserve a semifinal berth.
Both Pakistan and New Zealand remained unable to score in the first quarter of the match. But the black sticks dominated the second quarter, taking full advantage of Pakistan’s key defender Mubashar Ali’s injury, who was cautiously used by the team management in the match.
Mubashar suffered an injury in the first game against South Africa on Saturday when an absolute rocket of a penalty corner from Guise-Brown struck his face mask.
Hugo Inglis scored two back-to-back goals in the 17th and 18th minutes for New Zealand. A few minutes later, Pakistan’s Ghazanfar Ali netted a splendid field goal to put Pakistan back in the game.
Dylan Thomas scored the third goal for New Zealand in the 43rd minute, while in the last minute of the match, Sam Lone scored another goal for his team to make it 4-1.
“Our defence was not at its best today due to Mubashar’s injury. We were compelled to rest him time and again during the match and send his re-placements as he was not fully fit. “We also missed our chances to score goals. Our schedule was very tight. Yesterday, we played our first game and today the second one. But there are no excuses for it as we needed to win this match,” team manager Olympian Sameer Hussain told APP.
“They put us on the back foot in the second quarter and we could not really get back into it.
“We were not at our best today. We have to ac-cept that. We will pick ourselves up and try to win the next two matches to qualify for the semifinals,” he added.—APP
