LAHORE: FG Polo Team and BN Polo Team qualified for the main final of the Diamond Paints Polo Cup for Champions Trophy 2020 after defeating their respective opponents in the semifinals played here at the Lahore Polo Club (LPC) ground on Friday
In the first match of the day, FG Polo Team played superbly against Diamond Paints and toppled them with a score of 9-4. Tom Brodie played key role in FG Polo team’s crucial victory, which helped them earn place in the main final. Tom was top scorer with superb six goals while Lt Col Omer Minhas contributed with a brace and Mian Abbas Mukhtar struck one. From Diamond Paints, the major contribution came from Hissam Ali Hyder, who banged in a brace while Mir Huzaifa Ahmed and Raja Arslan Najeeb converted one goal apiece, but their efforts were futile in the end.
FG Polo Team showed their dominance right from the word go, as they hammered a hat-trick of goals to gain 3-0 lead while Diamond Paints converted one to finish first chukker at 3-1. Diamond Paints fired in another goal in the beginning of the second chukker to further reduce the margin to 3-2, but FG Polo Team then changes their strategy and launched a series of attacks on Diamond Paints’ goal, which helped them enhance their lead to 5-2.
Diamond Paints started the third chukker with another field goal to reduce the deficit to 5-3, but FG Polo Team once again showed their dominance and thrashed two back-to-back goals to further strengthen their lead to 7-3. FG Polo maintained their dominance in the fourth and last chukker as well as they smashed in two more goals to gain a healthy 9-3 lead while in the dying moments of the match, Diamond Paints struck one to lose the match by 4-9.
In the second match of the day, the tremendous team work by all the four players guided BN Polo Team to 4-2 victory against AOS Polo Team and also a berth in the main final against FG Polo Team. Babar Naseem, Raja Mikael Sami, Saqib Khan Khakwani and Eulogio Celestino contributed one goal each while from AOS Polo Team, Ismail Afzal and Raja Samiullah hit one goal apiece.
AOS started the match with a field goal to take 1-0 lead, which couldn’t last long as BN Polo Team fired in two back-to-back goals to earn 2-1 lead. The second chukker saw AOS scoring the only goal of the chukker to square the things at 2-all. BN Polo Team bounced back well in the third chukker and pumped in two back-to-back goals to gain 4-2 edge, which remained intact till the end as no more goal was scored in the remaining third and fourth chukkers, thus BN Polo Team won the match by 4-2.
Now BN Polo Team will face FG Polo Team challenge in the main final of the tournament to be played on Sunday at 2:45 pm at the Lahore Polo Club’s Aibak Polo ground.
