KARACHI: Head coach Haneef Khan, alongside three players of the Pakistan Junior Hockey team returned to the country on Saturday after participating in the recently-concluded Asia Cup.

Besides coach Haneef, three players of Pakistan Junior Hockey team Abdul Wahab, Arbaz Khan and Ayaz Ahmed also landed here at Jinnah International on Saturday afternoon.

The players received a warm welcome from the Karachi Hockey Association (KHA) officials and their families at the airport. They also received garlands as a symbol of appreciation.

It is pertinent to mention that Pakistan finished as the runners-up of the Junior Hockey Asia Cup after falling for a 1-2 defeat against arch-rivals India in the blockbuster final.

Singh Angad Bir opened the scoring for India in the 12th minute via a brilliant field goal and gave his side an upper hand in the first quarter.

Hundal Araijeet Singh then doubled India’s lead just four minutes into the second quarter as Pakistan spilt a couple of opportunities to fire an equalizer.

The third quarter turned out to be a fortune changer for the green shirts as they finally registered a goal on the scoreboard, courtesy of a calculated field goal by Ali Basharat in the 37th minute.

Basharat’s goal forced India to be more defensive and they cordoned off their post to deny Pakistan any chance to fire the equalizer.

Pakistan made several attempts to breach India’s defences by dribbling past their defenders and awarded penalty corners but failed to fire the ball into the nets and thus India ran away with the victory.

Heading into the blockbuster final, both India and Pakistan were unbeaten in the continental event.

The arch-rivals have so far come face to face in four Junior Hockey Asia Cup finals with India winning on three occasions – 2004, 08 and 23 – while the green shirts emerged victorious once in 1996.

Furthermore, before this year’s tournament both Pakistan were level as the joint-most title-winning sides (3) but India’s latest title victory propelled them to the record title holder of the Asian event.

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