Top-ranked Pakistan and Malaysia played out a thrilling three-all draw in round-three matches while defending champions India trounced minnows Oman 11-0 to maintain their all-win record at the Asian Champions Trophy Hockey here.
On Sunday, at the Al Rayyan Stadium, India aided by two goals apiece from Dharamvir Singh, V Raghunath and Rupinder Pal Singh picked up their third successive win in the six-nation tournament.
Leading 4-0 at the end of half time play, India scored seven more in the second half to complete the rout of the only GCC country taking part in the tournament.
SV Sunil, Guruvinder S Chandi, Akashdeep Singh, Harbir Singh and Danish Mujtaba scored one goal each for the eight-time Olympic champions.
India had defeated China 4-0 and Japan 3-1 in their opening two matches.
India now leads the points tally with nine points, followed by Pakistan and Malaysia, who both have seven points from three matches. With the top two teams of the round-robin qualifying for the final, India-Pakistan match will be crucial, as to which of the teams qualify for the December 27 final.
In the last match of the day, a goal two minutes from end helped Malaysia hold formidable Pakistan 3-3.
Malaysia, coached by Paul Revington, took the lead in the 20th minute to stun the Champions League bronze medal winners. The four-time World Cup winners took just a minute to restore parity with Muhammad Rizwan Sr sounding the board with a clean strike to make it one-all.
Malaysia again went into the lead with a goal from Faizal Saari 43 minutes into the match.
In an evenly contested match, Pakistan bounced back to score two goals in the 55th and 57th minute from Muhammad Waqas to take the lead. But a late strike from Jalil Abdul shattered Pakistan’s hopes of collecting full points from the match.
In the first match of the day, China defeated Japan 4-2 to register the first win of the tournament.
Yi Song was in unstoppable form for the 2006 Asian Games silver medal winners. Song scored three of the four goals his team scored, two from penalty conversion and one field.
Yang Dong opened the scoring in the third minute for the winners through a field goal, while Kei Kawakami and Koji Kayukawa scored for Japan.
