Tour of Netherlands: Pakistan U21 sweep tournament

Hockey side keeps clean sheets in victories over one Dutch and two German clubs

KARACHI: Pakistan’s U21 hockey team has won an international tournament in the Netherlands and now heads to Spain to play against their junior team.

Apart from hosts Enschedese Hockey Vereniging Hockey Club (EHV HC) and Pakistan U21, two German sides — Kahlenberg and Raffelberg — also participated in the tournament, where all the teams played three matches each over the weekend.

Pakistan defeated EHV HC in the opening match 4-0, followed by their two wins against the two German teams with identical scores of 5-0. Bilal Qadir was the overall top scorer with his three goals, followed by Dilber Hussain, Hassan Anwar, Shan Irshad scoring two each while Ammad Butt, Abu Bakr, Mubashar Ali, Fahad and Atiq Arshad scored one apiece.



That ended the Colts’ tour of Netherlands, where the national junior side won all of its six matches — with the first three wins coming against Dutch hockey clubs — scoring a total 33 goals and conceding only five.

In the second and last leg of the tour, the team moves to Spain, where the U21 Greenshirts will play three matches against the hosts’ national junior side.



According to head coach Tahir Zaman, the whole team produced incredible performances in every match. “The youngsters did not concede even a single goal during the tournament, which shows that both defending and attacking have improved,” Zaman told The Express Tribune.

Meanwhile, Dilber said that the entire squad played with energy and intelligence. “Each member of the team played his role perfectly, an element that was missing earlier,” he observed. “Now we all will have to work even harder to defeat our Spanish opponents; that will be our real test.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2016.

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