JAKARTA: Pakistan’s hockey team recorded a thumping 4-1 triumph against Malaysia at the Asian Games on Sunday when it endured disappointments in other disciplines.

Weightlifter Jamil Akhtar finished last in his final with shooter Usman Chand going one better in the skeet final, finishing second-to-last.

Neither Gohar Shahbaz nor Mehboob Ali were able to advance from their track semi-finals while the volleyball team lost their quarter-final playoff to South Korea.

The baseball team began their campaign in the Indonesian capital with a 0-15 hammering against Japan in their Group ‘A’ contest as Pakistan’s three boxers and two jiu jitsu players fell in the last-16 matches.

It was the hockey team that really shone, bringing joy to the Pakistan contingent and raising hopes of a gold medal at Games with a dominant performance against a team ranked a place higher than them after all but sealing top spot in Pool ‘B’ after a fourth successive triumph.

Ajaz Ahmed struck twice, both his goals coming in the second half, with Mohammad Irfan and Mubashar Ali scoring the other two goals for Pakistan.

Riding on thumping victories in their opening three matches, Pakistan took the lead in the sixth minute as Irfan sent a low flick past Malaysian goalkeeper S. Kumar.

The lead only lasted five minutes as Malaysia drew level through Faiz Helmi Jali but Pakistan came back strongly in the second half, scoring three times in nine minutes to stun their opponents.

With Malaysia down to 10 players following Faiz’s yellow card, Pakistan took advantage of the numerical advantage to regain the lead in the 38th with Ajaz scoring with a hard shot into the corner.

Mubashar Ali converted a penalty corner in the 42nd minute to make it 3-1 before Ajaz rounded off the scoring with a superb individual finish.

Pakistan now face Bangladesh in their final Pool’ B’ match on Tuesday where only a very heavy loss would deny them top spot in the section.

With two bronze medals so far at the Games, Pakistan are joint-33rd in the medals table. They could’ve added to that on Sunday but both Usman and Jamil were not up to the mark in their respective finals.

Usman had finished third in the qualification rounds but his total of 21 in the final at the JSC Shooting Range saw him end fifth. Mansour AlRashidi of Kuwait won gold with 52 points.

Jamil was similarly below par in the men’s 105kg weightlifting final at the JI Expo, lifting a total of 293kg — 135 in snatch and 158 in clean and jerk — to end seventh. Uzbekistan’s Ruslan Nurudinov won the event, lifting 421kg.

At the main stadium, Gohar was last in the men’s 100m semi-final, both in the race and overall, as he finished 24th after clocking 10.80.

Mehboob fared better, ending fourth in his 400m hurdles semi-final with a time of 51.27. It was, however, not enough for him to advance to the final even though he finished 12th overall among 22 competitors.

Pakistan’s volleyball team saw their stint at the Games come to an end when they lost 25-19, 25-22, 25-17 to South Korea in their playoff for the quaret-final.

There was no luck for boxers Syed Mohammed Asif, Gul Zaib or Razia Bano.

Asif lost his men’s flyweight 52kg bout to Kazakh Azat Usenaliev 0-5 while Gul Zaib lost by the same score to another Kazakh, Aslanbek Shymbergenov in the men’s welterweight 69kg fight.

Kazakhstan were similarly dominant in women’s boxing with Razia’s flyweight 51kg bout against Nazym Kyzaibay not even going the full distance with the referee stopping the contest.

In jiu-jitsu, Mohammad Mumtaz recorded 3-0 points victory over Palestinian Mohammed Hafiz Abdal in their newaza men’s -77kg last-32 clash but fell in the next stage to Kyrgyzstan’s Nursultan Alymkulov, who won via submission.

Mumtaz’s team-mate Abdul Rehman also lost on submission to Bahrain’s Nijad Algosaibi at the same stage.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2018