KARACHI: District West carved out a convincing 34-28 victory over district East in the exciting final to win the National Bank of Pakistan Cup basketball tournament at the Arambagh floodlit court on Friday.

The winners, who enjoyed slender lead over their opponents throughout the event, led 19-14 at the half time.

In the fiercely-fought battle, the winners led 9-6 in first quarter and accumulated 10 points as against eight in the second. However, despite losing the third quarter 7-10, the eventual champions were 26-24 up before rounding off the fourth eight-four to register victory.

Talha Amjad made his mark scoring 21 points. He was followed by Ali Chanzeb who finished with 13.

Zia and Muzammil were the main scorers for the losers scoring nine and eight points respectively.

Players of the teams time and again argued with the match referees on their decisions and tried to pressurise them.

The NBP sports head Ovais Asad Khan, who graced the occasion, gave away the prizes.

Also present on the occasion were Amjad Ali, Abdul Nasir, Ghulam Mohammad, Tariq Hussain, Abid Iftikhar, former international S M Tanveer, Mohammad Yaqoob, Yaqoob Qadri and Mahfooz-ul-Haq.

Published in Dawn December 11th, 2016