World champions Australia are leading the standings with a maximum nine points from three consecutive victories, while defending champions New Zealand are on eight points from four matches.
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In other two matches at same venue, Pakistan will play against Australia while Canada will take on India.
India were put on the board in just the 4th minute through Manpreet Singh and though Pakistan came back through captain Irfan’s penalty corner in the 7th, it was one way traffic for the rest of the encounter. “For the next match, we will push them and train them hard”, he said.
Pleased with India’s show, coach Roelant Oltmans also said it could have been a bigger scoreline.
Having faltered in back-to-back games against New Zealand and Australia, Pakistan desperately needed to beat the Indians in a bid to stay alive in the seven-nation competition.
Muhammad Irfan scored Pakistan’s second after a penalty corner shot ricocheted across the New Zealand goal to the unmarked Irfan.
Failing to exert pressure despite taking an early lead, India hung on grimly against several threatening Canadian raids to clinch their second victory in three outings. Their top players were then playing in the cash-rich Hockey India League and were allowed to skip the tournament.
Oltmans said he would tell his team to keep their heads and execute their game plan against the Green Sticks. The goal arrived from a fast break with SV Sunil feeding the ball to Manpreet inside the left-hand side of the shooting circle. In the 50th minute, it was an opportunistic goals from Talwinder Singh. India started the match with a very positive approach as Manpreet Singh scored the goal in the fourth minute of the match.
“We only gave away a few chances to Pakistan, so we really controlled the game for the duration”.
One of the 13 matches ended in draw. This is match we had targeted to win and we tried hard in the last quarter.
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It is a famous win for the Sardaar Singh’men and team.
