Pakistan, India clash in hockey today

KARACHI: Pakistan face India in the Commonwealth Games on Saturday (today) in Gold Coast, Australia.

The match will begin at 9:30 PST.

Pakistan are ranked 13th and India are much ahead, sitting in the sixth position. Pakistan played a 1-1 draw against Wales, ranked 23 in the world, the other day.

The other teams in the Pool B are England and Malaysia.

When the team was going to Australia last week, an official of the management told this scribe that the Green-shirts would surprise India. “We have made up a plan for the match against India,” he claimed.

The performance of the Green-shirts has been poor in the last four international competitions. Last month they were held to a 4-4 draw by Oman in a three-nation tournament. That compelled PHF to appoint Holland’s Roelant Oltmans to improve the performance of Pakistan. Interestingly, Oltmans served as the high performance director and head coach of India from 2013 to 2015. Therefore, it is being expected that the Green-shirts, despite being a much-lower ranked side, could beat India.

The match will be telecast live on sports channels. It is expected that millions of fans in India and Pakistan will watch this encounter. India created visa issues for Pakistan which prevented the country from participating in the Junior Hockey World Cup in 2016. India have not played any bilateral series with Pakistan for many years.

Pakistan and India have so far played 171 matches. Pakistan have an edge over India, with 82 wins. India have won 59. The other 30 matches were drawn. Pakistan have scored 391 goals and India 344.