Faisalabad, Lahore, Sargodha, Bahawalpur in hockey semis

LAHORE: Faisalabad, Lahore, Sargodha and Bahawalpur stormed into semifinals of First Quaid-e-Azam Inter-Division Hockey Championship 2021 at National Hockey Stadium on Thursday.

The semifinals and the final will be played on Saturday (tomorrow) and Sunday (today), respectively, at the same venue.

Four more matches were played on the 11th day of the championship but the most important encounter was played between Multan and Bahawalpur division hockey teams.

It may be noted here that three teams - Faisalabad, Lahore and Sargodha had already booked their place in the knockout stage at the end of 10th day’s matches and Bahawalpur team completed the semifinal lineup on the 11th day of the championship when they edged out injury-hit Multan team by a narrow margin of 2-1.

Ali Murtaza of Bahawalpur scored his team’s first field goal in the 5th minute; however, Multan leveled the score in the 25th minute when Kashif Sadiq sent the ball into goalpost after a beautiful field move.

Both the teams afterwards tried their best to take a lead but Bahawalpur team managed to score the decisive goal when their captain Absar bin Rauf converted a penalty corner in the 38th minute.

The second match of 11th day was played between Sargodha and Gujranwala. Sargodha thrashed their rivals comfortably with the score of 4-1.

Sargodha were in marvelous form and started the match in an aggressive style. Sargodha’s M Talha scored his team’s first two goals in 5th and 17th minutes. Shaheer strengthened his team’s position with another field goal in 42nd minute.

Saqib Ali of Gujranwala converted a penalty corner in 56th minute.

Sargodha struck once again near the end of the match.

Rawalpindi trounced DG Khan by 3-0 in the third match of the day. They scored their three goals 30th, 40th and 55th minutes through Usman Janjua, skipper Mehran Ali and Sammar Abbas, respectively.

Faisalabad routed Sahiwal by 6-1. M Usman and Shehroz Khan netted two goals each for Faisalabad. Ibraheem and Sajid contributed one goal each for the victorious team. Sahiwal’s only goal was scored by Shakir Ali in the 56th minute.

Punjab Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs Rai Taimoor Khan Bhatti, Provincial Minister Ansar Majeed Khan Niazi, Director General Sports Punjab Adnan Arshad Aulakh and Punjab Hockey Association Secretary Lt-Col (retd) Asif Naz Khokhar witnessed the matches.