KARACHI: Mari Petroleum Company Limited taught Port Qasim Authority a harsh lesson notching up an authoritative 7-1 victory in the third Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS) All-Pakistan Hockey Tournament at Abdul Sattar Edhi Stadium on Thursday.

This was MPCL’s first victory in two games. After taking lead twice, they were held to a 2-2 stalemate by Wapda in their Pool ‘A’ opener on Wednesday.

PQA, who had replaced Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) after latter pullout of the event at a last minute, are out of reckoning after suffering back-to-back defeats. They lost 0-4 to PAF the other day.

MPCL had a slow start and were restricted to a solitary goal till half-time, thanks to Waqar Ali’s strike in the 13th minute.

The winners mobilised their efforts after resumption and went on a goal-scoring spree with Waqar scoring his second goal off a penalty-corner in the 35th minute.

PQA retaliated and managed to reduce the margin through a Kashif Jawad penalty-corner conversion.

Ghazanfar Ali also scored a brace — including a penalty stroke — while Waseem Akram, Umair Sattar, and Abdul Rehman chipped in one goal apiece.Tauseeq Arshad salvaged pride by scoring an equaliser for Wapda off fourth penalty in the 31st minute while Ejaz Ahmed made it 2-1 two minutes later.

Waseem was later declared man-of-the-match.

Wapda, runners-up of the last CNS event, struggled to get past PAF 3-2 in a rain-hit second match of the day.

The match was stopped twice, first briefly in the third quarter and second it was stopped for about 45 minutes.

Wapda trailed 0-1 at half-time but recovered to post first win in the competition.

Rizwan Ali capitalised his team’s sixth penalty corner in the 25th minute to put PAF ahead. Earlier, airmen failed to convert all five penalty corners coming their way.

However, the lead was short-lived as Rizwan scored his second goal by via a penalty corner in the 53rd minute to drew level.

Captain M. Aleem Bilal scored the match-winning goal in the 55th minute and was declared man-of-the-match.

Forward M. Dilber slammed a hat-trick as holders NBP outplayed Punjab 4-0 to stay unbeaten in Pool ‘B’. The match started an hour behind schedule.

Man-of-the-match Dilber struck the goals in the first, 46th, and 53rd minutes to complete the feat.

Junaid Manzoor completed the tally for the winners, who led 1-0 at half-time.

It may be mentioned that Rizwan Ali had scored first hat-trick of the competition that helped his team PAF coast 4-0 win over PQA the other day.

Friday’s fixtures: Wapda vs PQA at 10:00am; Navy vs Army at 4:00pm.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2021