Faisalabad shock Lahore to win Inter-Division Hockey Championship

LAHORE: Faisalabad shocked Lahore by 4-0 in a high-profile final to clinch the title of First Quaid-e-Azam Inter-Division Hockey Championship 2021 at National Hockey Stadium on Tuesday.

The third position went to Bahawalpur who defeated strong Sargodha in a nail-biter by a narrow margin of 1-0.

Punjab Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs Rai Taimoor Khan Bhatti, Secretary Sports and Youth Affairs Punjab Fuad Hashim Rabbani, Director General Sports Punjab Adnan Arshad Aulakh and PHF Secretary Asif Bajwa were the guests of honour at the final.

Director Admin Javed Chohan, Director Sports Hafeez Bhatti, PHF Chief Selector Manzoor Junior, Head coach of national hockey team Olympian Khwaja Junaid, Olympians M Saqlain, Rana Mujahid, Secretary PHA Lt-Col (retd) Asif Naz Khokhar and a large number of hockey fans were also present to witness title clash.

Taimoor awarded a cash prize of Rs300,000 besides a glittering trophy and gold medals to Faisalabad. Secretary Sports and Youth Affairs Punjab Fuad Hashim Rabbani gave away a cash prize of Rs200,000 and silver medals to Lahore.

Bahawalpur got a cash prize of Rs100,000 and bronze medals from PHF Secretary Asif Bajwa.

The final match was started aggressively by both the teams. They attacked each other’s goalpost repeatedly but failed to score any goal during the first 19 minutes. However, Faisalabad’s Ghulam Mujtaba opened the scoring through a field goal in the 20th minute. Faisalabad’s forward M Sajid struck another field goal after just eight minutes gap to strengthen his team’s position.

Lahore tried their best to counter the attacking game of Faisalabad but they failed mainly due to their weak ball control techniques. Lahore’s penalty corner department also badly failed to click during the title decider. They got as many as ten penalty corners during the match but failed to convert any of them.

Faisalabad’s penalty corner specialist M Usman wrapped up the match when he converted two penalty corners in 54th and 60th minutes. Overall, they got five penalty corners.

In the 3rd position match, Bahawalpur edged out strong Sargodha by 1-0. Both the teams fought well but failed to score until 59th minute when Bahawalpur’s Ali Raza (shirt number 8) netted the only goal of the match through a field effort.

Lahore division hockey team captain Hannan Shahid grabbed two cash prizes (Rs25,000 each) for being Best Player of the Tournament and the Scorer of Most Goals (11).

Faisalabad’s Hamza Shahbaz was adjudged the Best Goalkeeper of the Championship and pocketed a cash prize of Rs25,000. The honour of Man of the Final went to Faisalabad captain Ali Raza.