KARACHI: Chief Selector Hasan Sardar said on Saturday that while he was surprised by Pakistan’s loss to a lowly-rated Poland in the qualifiers, he had a fair idea of what could have happened on the day with the boys.

 ‘I guess the boys took it easy after already having made it to the finals,’ said Hasan while commenting on the defeat.

‘They may also have rested the seniors more and sent in the juniors during the rolling substitutions. They also played Nasir Ahmed as the goalkeeper instead of Salman Akbar in this match and the change has unfortunately resulted in the three goals against us, the most scored against Pakistan in the tourney so far. Plus there obviously has been much missing,’ he said.

‘It is usual for a team playing so well in an event to suddenly surprise everyone by losing a simple match. Frankly, I am relieved that it happened on Saturday instead of Sunday,’ the former Olympian joked.

Meanwhile, legendary hockey player Samiullah said that there was nothing to worry about at the moment as Pakistan was already in the final. ‘Still losing to a team of the likes of Poland shows our national team’s actual strength,’ he said. ‘It remains to be seen what happens in the final on Sunday but even if we win and qualify to play in the World Cup, the management shouldn’t allow the boys to relax before the mega event in India next year,’ he said.

‘They should remain in practice and get eight weeks of training with one week’s break in between after three week’s camp to be followed by four weeks of camp otherwise there still won’t be any understanding among the players,’ he elaborated.

‘I keep stressing on teamwork and understanding between the players as the World Cup is the target of all the teams featuring in the event and they have been training for it for the past two years whereas we seem to be unprepared for even the qualifiers what with the team’s visas too coming so late and leaving them with no time to play practice or warm-up matches with the better European teams, he concluded.