Pakistan face Indiain CT opener today

ISLAMABAD: The final edition of the prestigious men’s Champions Trophy (CT) Hockey Tournament rolls into action in the Dutch city of Breda Saturday with mouthwatering clash between arch rivals Pakistan and India on cards on the opening day.

After finishing poor seventh in 10-team XXI Commonwealth (CW) Games that did not include six of the world’s top 12-teams, Pakistan hockey now faces another stiff challenge in the Champions Trophy where arch-rivals India will be their first opponents.

Pakistan finished behind world’s 23rd ranked Scotland in the XXI CW Games on a position which turned out to be their worst-ever. In absence of teams like Germany, Holland , Argentina, Belgium, Spain and even were not drawn to play the ultimate finalists New Zealand and Australia, Pakistan 7th position was poorest ever in the CW Games.

Pakistan deliberately missed the penultimate Champions Trophy held two years back in London more due to fear of losing rather than anything else.

Though Pakistan did not qualify for that particular Trophy, FIH while showing courtesy to the services rendered by Air Marshal Nur Khan (who initiated the Trophy) offered Pakistan a wild card to compete in the event. The fear of not matching the best overcame the current Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) officials who decided against sending the team to London. Belgium seized the opportunity and from there on never looked back emerging as one of the strongest teams in the world.

On other hand, the deliberate miss proved fatal as greenshirts never recovered from that blow and consistently kept on losing their ranking to end up 14th and now 13th in the world.The team, however, would get a chance of redemption as a good performance in the concluding Champions Trophy would help them improve their ranking.

In fact the nation demands nothing less than title from the team. Since Pakistan is the proud winner of first two editions of the Trophy in late seventies, there would be no better and befitting sending off to Champions Trophy than to bring it back home.

Admitted that Pakistan never won the Trophy after 1994, still we came closer to victory only four years back in India.

Pakistan lost to Germany narrowly in the final in front of hostile Indian crowd. This time around Pakistan have all the odds in their favour. The team has experience foreign coach in Renault Oltmans who turned the Indian team into one of the world’s top outfit during the last three years. The finance for the current PHF is in abundance as the government during the last three years has doled out record grant to the federation.

Asian champions India will feel that they have a fantastic chance of challenging for the Champions Trophy, a title which, they have never won. They came agonisingly close at the 2016 event in London, finishing runners- up behind Australia thanks to a shoot-out defeat. A fourth place finish at the Gold Coast 2018 CW this April triggered a change to the position of Head Coach, with Harendra Singh taking over the head coach responsibilities, with ace goalkeeper PR Sreejesh being named captain of a side that also includes double cap centurions Manpreet Singh, SV Sunil and Sardar Singh. Thirty-one-year-old Sardar is just two matches away from reaching the milestone of 300 international appearances for India, something which he looks likely to achieve in Breda.

The meeting between Pakistan, the nation that launched the Hockey Champions Trophy back in 1978, and India, the eight time Olympic champions, is a fixture that is sure to draw thousands of spectators to the venue as well as millions of fans tuning in from across the world, eagerly anticipating the latest episode of this long-running battle between two of the sport’s most successful nations.