KARACHI: Two low-profile teams – Gilgit and Fata – completed their miserable run in the 65th Air Marshal Nur Khan National Hockey Championship with huge defeats at the Abdul Sattar Edhi Hockey Stadium on Saturday.

Drawn in Pool ‘A’, Gilgit bowed out unceremoniously as they succumbed to their four consecutive debacle In their final pool outing, National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) blanked them 27-0.Gilgit altogether conceded no less then 88 goals and managed just two in four matches.

Fata, on the other hand, conceded 55 goals in four games of Pool ‘B’ and failed to score any. In the last fixture on Saturday they went down 16-0 to Army Whites.

Both teams now head home while trying to erase bad memories of their play during the championship.

At the outset, former champions PIA sent Islamabad packing 8-0.

Hammad Anjum and Roman Khan shared four goals amongst themselves while Shafqat Rasool, Mohammad Zain, Abu Zar and Amir Shahzad netted once.

Police survived scare before handing a 4-3 defeat upon Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to post second win in three Pool ‘A’ games. Their only defeat had come against NBP.

Shahbaz struck two while Noman and Abrar added once for the Policemen.

Ismail (2) and Yasir (1) scored for the losers.

In the last match of the day, Navy subdued Port Qasim Authority (PQA) 3-1 to stay in contention for a place in last eight.

This was sailors’ second triumph besides a 2-2 draw against Wapda Whites.

Akbar Ali, Asad Azhar and Sabir scored once for the winners. Abu Rehman scored the conolation goal for losers.

Sunday’s fixtures:

Wapda Whites vs Balochistan at 9:00am; PAF vs Islamabad at 11:00am; NBP vs Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 1:00pm; SSGC vs Sindh at 3:00pm; Army Whites vs Punjab at 5:00pm.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2019