Failure to qualify for hockey World Cup

This was the first time that Pakistan were not in the mega event.

Pakistan is often called one of the pioneers of hockey. The Greenshirts boast a plethora of wins over the years: eight Olympic gold medals, four World Cups, 18 Champions Trophy medals and 14 Asian Games medals to name a few.

However, for all their former glory, they failed to qualify for the Hockey World Cup for the first time in history. The team lost the semi-final match of the 9th Asia Cup to South Korea 2-1. The players were squarely blamed for the shock result as they were culpable of missing several easy penalty corners.



The team then featured in the 2013 Asia Cup at Malaysia, which was their last chance to qualify, and had a smooth passage into the semi-finals of Asia Cup. The side won all three pool matches but lost to Korea, which meant that Pakistan missed out on the World Cup.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 31^st,  2014.

Like Sports on Facebook, follow @ETribuneSports on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.