International Festival of Hockey: Japan inflict 3-1 defeat on Pakistan

Captain Irfan disappointed with team’s poor performance in four-nation tourney

KARACHI: Pakistan faced a 3-1 defeat against Japan on Thursday, just one day after their worst-ever 9-1 defeat at the hands of World Champions Australia in the International Festival of Hockey at State Netball and Hockey Centre in Melbourne.

Japan opened the scoring with a field goal courtesy Kenta Tanaka in the 14^th minute. Pakistan were unable to answer with a goal, as Japan were able to maintain the lead till the end of the third quarter.

In the fourth quarter, Tanaka once again found the net in the 46^th minute to double his team’s lead. Genki Mitani then delivered the killer blow with a goal in the 50^th minute to push Japan 3-0 up.

Pakistan were able to salvage some respect when Mohammad Atiq scored for them in the last minute of the match as the match ended 3-1, with Greenshirts reeling at the bottom of the league table with two consecutive defeats in their first two matches.

“This is not good,” captain Mohammad Irfan told The Express Tribune. “We lost to a team that is ranked lower than us. We need to work a lot on some aspects of our game to turn things around.”

He continued by saying that the team needs to buckle up. “This performance is not satisfactory and we need to buckle up for the next match. We will try to put up a better performance in the next match, but we don’t have much time to gather ourselves since we are playing back-to-back matches.”

Pakistan now play New Zealand on Friday in their last league match of the tournament.