In the quarter finals, Customs upset Army, Sindh A and Police also lost
The young and recently re-formed Pakistan Customs team surprised everyone by making it to the semi-finals of the Army Welfare Trust 67th National Hockey Championship. Defending champions WAPDA and Pakistan Navy also reached the semi-finals, while Sindh A and Punjab Police faced defeat. According to the details, the ongoing national hockey championship at Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ashfaq Hockey A Stadium Rawalpindi in collaboration with Pakistan Hockey Federation and Army Welfare Trust. The quarter finals were played on Friday, the ninth day of the ship. On this occasion, Secretary PHF Syed Haider Hussain, Olympian Hanif Khan, Olympian Nasir Ali, Olympian Shakeel Abbasi, Ihsanullah International, Olympian Waqas Akbar, Olympian Tariq Aziz, Olympian Javed, Olympian Muhammad Zubair, Olympian Umar Bhutta, Olympian Sandar Arshad, Olympian Rahim Khan, International Rana Shafiq, International Umar Shahzad, Rana Shuja, Raja Shahid, Muhammad Yasin, Tahir Gujjar and others were also present.
In the first quarter-final, the Sindh A team consisting of young players was defeated by the defending champion WAPDA by eight goals to one and made it to the semi-finals. On behalf of WAPDA, Olympian Nandi Haider, Rana Waheed and Hammad Anjum scored two goals each. Moeen Shakeel and Abdul Rahman scored one goal each. The chief guest of this match was Major General Fida Hussain Malik, Executive Director Army Welfare Trust. The match awarded cash award to Hammad Anjum. The umpires of this match included Asad Abbas, M. Bilal and Wasim while the field jury consisted of Ghafran Bukhari, Shafiq, Amil Khan, Abdul Malik, Ihsan-ul-Haq and Mubarak Ali.
In the second quarter-final, Pakistan Customs defeated the experienced Pakistan Army team by three goals to one and made it to the final four. Hamza Fayyaz scored two goals on behalf of the winning team. While the third goal was scored by Ghazanfar Ali, the only goal scorer of Army was Rao Arsalan. The match was supervised by International Yasir Khurshid, Waqas Butt and Wajahat while Sajid Khan, Imtiazul Hasan, Haroon Butt, Akbar Ali. and Hamza Tufail were the jury members. The special guest of the second quarter-final was Maj. Gen. Imtiaz Khan, Executive Director Medasc, who was introduced to the players of both teams before the match, in which he advised the players of both teams to play well. Also, at the end of the match, he gave Hamza Fayyaz Komen of the Match cash award and encouraged him a lot.
In the third quarter-final, Pakistan Navy defeated Punjab Police 3-0 after an interesting match, Usman Ali scored two goals on behalf of the winning team and was declared man of the match, while one goal was scored by Rana Waleed. The special guest of this match was Major General Dr. Samriz Salik, Executive Director Army Welfare Trust, who was introduced to both teams before the match, he gave cash prize to Usman Ali, the man of the match. And Afsar Ali supervised while Field Jury included Iftikhar Ahmed, Naveed Yusuf, Yasir Lodhi, Yamin Bhatti and Zaheerul Haque.
Saturday will be a day of rest in the championship, both the semi-final matches will be played on Sunday, the first semi-final at 7 pm and the second semi-final at 9 pm.
