Shahbaz Ahmed Sr. hopeful of Greenshirts reaching final of Asian Champions Trophy, China
Shahbaz Ahmed Sr., the former Olympian and the 1994 World Cup-triumphant captain, looked quite hopeful for the Greenshirts to beat the arch-rivals, India in their last match and qualify for the final of the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy hockey tournament
being played in Ordos, China.
The Greenshirts who are at the top of the points table with nine points have scored three scintillating victories in their previous four matches of the tournament while they lost to Japan by one goal to three. The Greenshirts started their Asian Champions
Trophy campaign beating Malaysia 3-2 followed by a 4-1 victory against China before losing to Japan and defeating South Korea in an impressive way by 3-2.
Shahbaz Ahmed, the champion campaigner, stated that the Greenshirts are looking in great touch and they should defeat the traditional rivals. He further stated that it has remained a common thing for all the teams to display a poor show in one of the games
in any tournament and for the Greenshirts it looks good as they have done it against Japan before the important matches of the event like the final.
“India are always nervous when playing against Pakistan and once we control our own nerves and manage to score a goal or two, we immediately have the upper hand thus putting them under more pressure from which they rarely recover,” Shahbaz stated about Pakistan’s
dominance against the Indians.
Shahbaz also advised the national side to play aggressive hockey against India saying that it is always difficult to defend the goalpost for the entire time of 70 minutes while Pakistan always won by adopting the attacking approach.
“But whatever the outcome, with Pakistan and India facing each other it will be another exciting, adrenaline-pumping, do or die affair as our boys, too, are well aware of the fact that a defeat against India doesn’t go down very well with the nation,” the
former Olympian further added to his comments regarding the excitement of the India-Pakistan matches.
It will be interesting to see if Pakistan can carry their winning momentum against the Indian team and get a decisive victory to make it to the finals of this exciting tournament.
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